Edwin Buckham paid Christine DeLay

In place of the usual "Best of the Web" column by James Taranto (an excellent daily roundup, BTW), opinionjournal.com gives us today's Political Diary. John Fund relays an interesting conversation he had with Tom DeLay. Some excerpts:

[DeLay] acknowledges that he "let [his] eye off the ball" and allowed some big-spending turkeys to pass the House. "The No Child Left Behind bill that gave the feds a bigger role in education, the last Farm Bill and the earmarks that got out of control even though they represent only a small part of the federal budget were all failings on my part," he told me. But he also staunchly defended the Medicare prescription drug bill he helped pass in a controversial late-night vote in 2003, saying it's saving money and improving the health of seniors by encouraging spending on drugs rather than hospital stays.

So Tom DeLay holds himself halfway accountable for being a big spender. I've only really made two indictments against DeLay. First that he's corrupt, and second that he was a big spender. Incredibly, DeLay still holds on to the premise that the prescription drug bill was a good idea. I'll be paying for that for decades to come. I have no evidence that DeLay isn't sincere in his confession here. I would have preferred that he lump in the prescription drug benefit with NCLB and earmarks in general. (Notice that DeLay only bemoans Farm Bill earmarks. DeLay was an aficionado of earmarks, though I doubt many of his were in the Farm Bill.)

This is where I find DeLay particularly galling:

Though Mr. DeLay insists on honoring the media embargo, he did offer one cryptic comment about the book's contents: "I'm afraid that Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey will not be completely happy with my book."

I suspect that DeLay is trying to protect the image of his legacy here. My position is pretty well baked in the history of this blog. DeLay's actual legacy is the loss of the Republican majorities in Congress. So why would DeLay attack Armey and Gingrich to protect his legacy? Because those two are telling the truth about DeLay.

In this interview, Armey says DeLay was a liability to the Republican Party. Armey faults Republicans for excessive spending and says DeLay is "conniving" and isn't "a good person". I guess that's as close as Armey wanted to get to "corrupt".

I also observed Gingrich taking some shots at DeLay. Five months prior to the November elections, Gingrich basically predicted that the dearth of ideas in the Republican Party under DeLay would cost the GOP its majorities in Congress. Gingrich also criticized the "Hammer" style of leadership. The most irritating example of that was the Prescription Drug bill.

I like Gingrich and Armey. They were committed to conservative ideals. As I've said, when Gingrich (and later Armey) left the house, there was noone to restrain DeLay's greed. Ultimately, that led to government-by-lobbyist and the Abramoff scandal.

So don't let DeLay fool you. Gingrich and Armey are the true architects of the 1994 Republican Revolution (although DeLay did help draft the Contract with America). DeLay turned something good in the late 1990s into the cesspool of the first half of this decade. Eventually, DeLay destroyed the Republican majorities created in 1994. Don't let him revise history.