Even the headline itself reeks of absurdity. After months of calling for DeLay's removal from office, now that he's resigning they don't want to let him go?
Of course, headlines are just headlines. It's what's in the article that shows how utterly devoid of ideas the national democrats are at this time. Here's Tom DeLay. He's indicted but not convicted, he's not under active investigation for any other ethics or legal issues. He has close associates under investigation or pleading guilty, which does reflect badly on him.
But he has resigned. He's gone. He has decided that, for whatever reason, his constituents deserve an election not dominated by the issues that surround him, issues most suredly generated by the democrats themselves.
But the Democrats have prepared an entire campaign around the "Tom DeLay is bad" meme. They can't afford to have him gone. If the standard is you resign if a member of your campaign staff pleads guilty to a crime, Senator Schumer should be on his way out now, since two of his staff members stole a republican candidate's social security number and used it to get his credit report.
So they refuse to let him go:
Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., chuckled with delight as he discussed DeLay’s political demise Tuesday afternoon.
...
Democrats were reluctant to let DeLay go out the door without kicking him several more times.
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"Tom DeLay is a chicken," proclaimed an e-mail from Jim Dean, brother of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and head of Democracy for America, the political action group that Dean founded.
We didn't think DeLay would ‘cut and run’ like he did. If he did nothing wrong — as he claims — then Tom DeLay shouldn't be afraid of a re-election campaign in a district he drew for himself,” Dean said.
DeLay is not being run out of congress -- at this time he is guilty of nothing except being a thorn in the side of democrats. I can't imagine republicans being this gleeful over a democrat's resignation, at least not so publicly.
And they could at least get the facts right. Tom Delay did not draw his district "for himself". In fact, the re-drawn Texas districts took solidly republican areas OUT of Tom DeLay's district, making it less safe.
Further, it is the democrats that have injected national politics and national money into a local race just to take out Tom DeLay, while Tom has graciously dropped out to spare his constituents a meaningless (for them) election. One would hope now the people of his district could have an election based on local issues. But the democrat was picked for one reason -- to make hay out of DeLay's trouble.
This reminds me of the 2002 New Jersey senate race. The Republican, Forrester, spent months scraping together money for ad buys blasting the much-better-funded democrat Torricelli for being corrupt. It worked, as he took a commanding lead in the polls. Then, when it was too close to the election to be ALLOWED to replace someone on the ballot, and way to late to change the ad buys or change the campaign, Toricelli was forced out of the race by the national democrats.
The went to court to override the laws of New Jersey and put Lautenberg on the ballot. He won handily, as all people knew about Forrester was that he wasn't corrupt like Torricelli.
But of course DeLay has resigned well before the deadlines, giving his district plenty of time to pick a new candidate and have a real election about real issues. It's hard to imagine the democrats allowing THAT to happen.
It would be nice to have an election based on two competing visions for the future. But since the Democrat vision for the future is little more than them in charge and Bush impeached, they have to keep trying to divert attention from their lack of anything important to accomplish.
So instead, they apparently now intend to run against a man who will be nothing more than a common citizen by the time the november elections come about.
They might as well make this a referendum on me.
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