DeLay Admission of Guilt

The Washington Post reports today that part of the reason Travis County (TX) District Attorney Ronnie Earl was able to successfully get indictments handed up for Tom DeLay was because he admitted that he had authorized the transfer of $190,000 of corporate donations to the RNC (which distributed them to candidates in Texas). In Texas it is illegal to get corporate donations for non-administrative expenses, and therefore DeLay had to launder the money through the RNC to turn soft money into hard money, usable by Texas candidates to Congress. Apparently, in discussions with Earle after the investigation had been launched, DeLay (through his lawyers) tried to work out a plea bargain where DeLay admitted wrongdoing and plead guilty to misdemeanors and was able to keep his leadership post in the Republican-controlled House. Most of the direct evidence of DeLay's wrongdoing are contained in his admissions directly to Earle, reducing the strength of DeLay's paranoid, McCarthyite argument about how the Democrats are out to get him in a partisan witch hunt. More likely, DeLay did commit the crime, admitted to it in private with Earle and publicly denied it in an attempt to save face (and his leadership position). This is emblematic of the Republicans who try to cover up things they do that would offend the public or conflict with the image they project of the "moral high-grounders". Witness the string of Republican politicians and talk show hosts (Rush Limbaugh, for example, who is on his fourth marriage) who proclaim the sanctity of marriage and go through wives faster than a prostitute with condoms (optimistically for the latter point). They know they do wrong, but they just love the power so much that anything they can do to enhance or keep hold of it they will do. They are like methamphetamine addicts. They will rob, intimidate or murder anyone as long as they get more dope (power in the case of Republicans)! It has to stop. [Note: I know there are Democrats with the same problems, but they do not profess to be "moral high-grounders" and the power hungry ones (like LBJ and his Vietnam addiction/Kennedy inferiority complex) are driven much more quickly out of power than the Republicans. In my example, for instance, LBJ realized his predicament and instead of being ruthless to gain re-election, bowed out of the presidential race.