Tom Delay and the Republican Moral Middle

Posted on April 6, 2005 in Accountability

I have a new word to introduce to the public: Delayism. Delayism is like McCarthyism except it is more corrupt. Like McCarthyism, it trades in lies — talk of treason — but goes a further step:

This morning, the Washington Post and the New York Times each broke new scandals involving Republican Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay. According to the Times, DeLay paid his wife and daughter more than $500,000 of his political donors’ money over the last four years. And the Post article highlights a seedy 1997 trip DeLay took, underwritten by “a mysterious company located in the Bahamas” that was tied to Russian business interests.

And that’s not the only legal or ethical scandal DeLay is involved in. DeLay illegally used corporate funds in support of his plan to re-district Texas, and he went on golf trips with gambling lobbyist Jack Abramoff–two months before DeLay helped kill legislation opposed by the gambling companies.

DeLay’s grandstanding on the Terri Schiavo tragedy–which a great majority of the country feels is political opportunism–was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Now, some Republicans in Congress are speaking out against DeLay, but most are still too scared of his powerful network of corporate donors.

Corporations have always been behind efforts to label the Left as traitors. We have erred, on occasion, and allowed the mantle to be laid upon us. But it is Tom Delay and his cronies — including Ann Coulter, Charlton Heston, Tom Selleck, and others — who have betrayed this country beyond measure.

Stop DeLay once and for all here.

Real Americans oppose extreme right wing Republicanism. It’s time for the Republicans to reassert the power of the Moral Middle.