The Emerging Martyrdom of St. Tom

by rayman

It's absolutely fascinating to watch the Republican response to Tom DeLay's ongoing foibles. Half of them want to cut bait ASAP (although most are loathe to say this without the cloak of anonymity). The other half, meanwhile, wants to elevate him to sainthood alongside JPII, never mind that he isn't even Catholic. This latter tendency is on full and frightening display in the Weakly Standard. I know many of you, sensibly enough, refuse to click on a link to the Standard (which would unleash some mutant strand of Internets cooties, I believe), so I'll point out some of the "highlights":

The truth is that Tom DeLay is a special target because he is the first legislative power broker to be an authentic Red State conservative. He is an unhyphenated Reaganite: militantly pro-life and pro-values on social issues, a pro-growth tax cutter on economic issues, and an unapologetic, spread-American-values interventionist abroad. In the years since the GOP's congressional realignment victory of 1994, no other GOP leader in either the House or Senate fully fits this description.

[...]

If DeLay goes down because of overseas trips and/or fundraising practices that have never caused the slightest political problem for anyone else, the lesson to other Red State leaders will be clear. The four-year House winning streak, so widely taken for granted among conservatives, will not long survive DeLay. That is why Democrats and Blue State media (despite some half-hearted efforts to depict DeLay as a GOP albatross) so fervently desire his career to end as soon as possible.

As he begins his effort to force the Senate to permit a majority to approve new conservative judges--inevitably to culminate in a Supreme Court nomination fight--Bill Frist will soon have to choose whether, like DeLay, to operate on the Red State side of the divide, expecting and getting no praise from older Blue State media. If Frist does so successfully, he is in the game to succeed President Bush as the Red State candidate. If he fails or turns aside, the Blue State media will dislike him less, but his presidential hopes will almost certainly be history.

Wow. Let me reiterate: wow. I particularly admire the "unhyphenated Reaganite" flourish, whatever the hell that means. For months, Digby has been pointing out how fundamentally tribalistic the modern-day Republican party is, and this last paragraph offers a chilling manifestation of this insanity. Allow me to pick up my jaw off the floor.

(via Political Wire)