The Conflict of the Faculties

Tom DeLay is the former House Republican majority leader known as "The Hammer." Turns out he is now bringing that bludgeon to the Communication discipline:

"Since his forced retreat from power in a corruption scandal, Tom DeLay, the former House Republican majority leader, must have been watching re-runs of “Cool Hand Luke.” That film’s cynical rationalization of life’s conflicts as merely a “failure to communicate” is Mr. DeLay’s approach to explaining the Republicans’ loss of Congress last year.

No, no, he insists in a new memoir, it wasn’t voters revolting against the quid pro quo corruption that Mr. DeLay turned into a dark art. Rather, Republicans “did not communicate their message” and overcome “short-term, media-fed issues.”

Despite Mr. DeLay’s retreat from public office after his indictment for political money laundering, the memoir is, of course, entitled “No Retreat, No Surrender.” Mr. DeLay excoriates former colleagues from Newt Gingrich to the leader of the moribund House ethics committee that finally found the temerity to admonish him. He is furious that Republicans didn’t back his attempt to stay in power after his indictment.

The private sector that the DeLay Inc. machine milked like a political cash cow is defended as if it were an underdog. “We should start recognizing that those who work in that sector have a right to political representation also,” says the former lawmaker as he defends his golf junket to Scotland — arranged by Jack Abramoff, the now-imprisoned lobbyist — as a genuine savings for the taxpayer.

Occasionally, truth peeks through. At one point, Mr. DeLay does allow that voters faced “a general perception of Republican incompetence and lack of principles.” Well, at least that got communicated, Mr. Former Leader." (The New York Times, "Tom DeLay Looks Back," March 21, 2007).