DeLay’s DoJ Probe Ends With a Whimper
18th August 2010
Eleanor Clift has been a Voice of the Crust so long that it has made her tone-deaf.
The Justice Department’s decision to let former House majority leader Tom DeLay off the hook and end the six-year-long investigation that drove him out of Washington at the peak of his power should win the Obama administration some points with Republicans, if not Democrats. This is the second high-profile Republican that Attorney General Eric Holder has vindicated, the other being the late senator Ted Stevens, whose corruption case Holder declined last year to prosecute.
Let’s see if I understand this: Because Holder has decided to say “Never mind!” to a politically-motivated legal proceeding once its objective (to destroy the effectiveness of a powerful opponent) is accomplished, He’s The Nice One? That’s like having a wrestler throw sand in the other guy’s eyes and having a commentator say, “Hey, he didn’t kick him in the groin while he was distracted! What a great guy!”
In Washington, these big scandals almost always end anti-climactically.
That’s because the objective wasn’t to actually follow through, but to put the other side off balance. C’mon, Eleanor, how long have you been in Washington that you don’t know this?
Power Line sums it up:
Tom DeLay exemplifies a thoroughly modern phenomenon: a public figure whose career–and, one suspects, whose life–has been ruined by the prosecutorial/media/political complex. After six years of headlines, DeLay’s persecutors have nothing to show for their efforts. Except, of course, that they ruined the former Majority Leader of the House of Representatives.
August 18th, 2010 at 11:59
I find it hard to be nice to DeLay, as he was always pretty sleazy. Even pretty hard-core Republicans often had a hard time accepting his way of countering the equally (or more) sleazy folks on the left. He still, BTW, faces state charges.
What really should p*** people off is that the government spent 6 years and lots of tax $$$ to figure out that it wasn’t worthwhile to prosecute the guy. While they are investigating but not prosecuting their own, I suspect that the talents of the attorneys in the Justice Department could have been used for some actual useful prosecution. Say, Black Panthers who threaten people at voting locations.
August 18th, 2010 at 20:17
Oh, absolutely. It was a total waste of time, but when the government wastes its time and money, it’s also wasting your time and money, and that was the objective. They wanted to take him down, and if throwing a taxpayer-funded blanket over him was what it took, they were perfectly happy to do that.