I’m really looking forward to Tom DeLay’s new book. From Robert Novak:
In No Retreat, No Surrender: One American’s Fight, DeLay is even more critical of his predecessor as majority leader, Dick Armey, and assails President Bush for being more compassionate than conservative. Even DeLay’s handpicked speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, is accused along with Gingrich and Armey of opening the door to the Democratic purge of him.
DeLay is an angry man after being driven from the leadership, from Congress and, so far, from public life by “a concerted effort to destroy me legally, financially and personally” through a 2005 indictment in Texas. DeLay’s response to Democratic District Attorney Ronnie Earle is familiar. What is unusual are his claims that “pre-existing tensions I had with Gingrich and Armey” partially explain their role in kicking DeLay out of the leadership.
DeLay admits that the team of Speaker Gingrich, Majority Leader Armey and Majority Whip DeLay, empowered by the 1994 elections, “were not a cohesive team, and this hindered our ability to change the nation.” He puts most blame “at Newt Gingrich’s door.” DeLay writes: “He knew nothing about running meetings and nothing about driving an agenda.” He adds: “Nearly every other day he had a new agenda, a new direction he wanted us to take. It was impossible to follow him.”
DeLay also declares “our leadership was in no moral shape to press” impeachment against President Bill Clinton. Writing well before Gingrich’s admission for the first time last week, DeLay asserts: “It is now public knowledge that Newt Gingrich was having an affair with a staffer during the entire impeachment crisis.”
DeLay refers to Armey as “so blinded by ambition as to be useless to the cause,” a “poor leader” who had “few fresh ideas.” He adds that Armey “resented anyone he thought might get in the way of his becoming speaker of the House. Beware the man drunk with ambition.” His version of the failed 1997 coup attempt against Gingrich pleads innocence and accuses Armey, after realizing he would not succeed Gingrich, of telling the speaker that DeLay was plotting against him: “He had lied to cover his ambitions, betraying both his movement and his fellow leaders.”
DeLay is angry that, under Democratic and news media pressure, Republicans retreated from a rule that an indicted House Republican need not resign from the leadership if indicted in a politically motivated prosecution. Gingrich and Armey (both out of Congress) opposed that rule. More significantly, to DeLay’s dismay, so did his former lieutenant, Hastert.
I don’t know where to start. The whole thing is pure gold.
