Bye-Bye Tom

Wow. That was a surprise. Tom DeLay has told Time magazine that he's leaving his seat in the House of Representatives and is pulling out of his race for reelection. Sure, he's been in a death spiral for a while, but I never expected that he'd actually admit it. We were very excited here at Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk when he won the Republican primary last month, thinking that this would just make Nick Lampson's victory all the sweeter when he took him down in November. But apparently the numbers just weren't going Tom's way. His own campaign poll showed him with about a 50-50 chance of victory (other polls had him running behind), and that's before the campaign starts in earnest and further indictments or plea agreements develop. The Washington Post has a nice review of DeLay's legal troubles in its report of DeLay's decision. They also pointed out that Texas law allows only three reasons to let a party nominee withdraw from the election: "He must either die, be convicted of a felony, or move out of his district." The second choice doesn't seem like it will happen quickly enough, so DeLay expects he'll change his residence to Alexandria, Virginia, (where he basically lives anyway) by the end of next month. It's true that whoever else the Texas Republican party tosses up against Lampson will be tougher than DeLay would've been, but Lampson lost his Congressional seat to the questionable redistricting before the last election, so he has a constituency himself.

But does Tom have any regrets? Unlike Sinatra, no. As he told Time:

"You can't prove to me one thing that I have done for my own personal gain," he added. "Yes, I play golf. I'm very proud of the fact that I play golf. It's the only thing that I do for myself. And when you go to a country and you're there for seven days and you take an afternoon off to play golf, what does the national media write? All about the golf, not about the meeting that went to. I'm not ashamed of anything I've done. I've never done anything in my political career for my own personal gain. You can look at my bank account and my house to understand that."

I have a feeling that we will be looking at all of that before this is all over. But there's still one loose end. What was the deal with that mug shot?

"I said a little prayer before I actually did the fingerprint thing, and the picture," he said. "My prayer was basically: 'Let people see Christ through me. And let me smile.'"

Proof that God does involve himself in human affairs! (And for the record, even Tom admits it was the "fakiest smile I'd ever given.")