"The truth is that Tom DeLay is a special target because he is the first legislative power broker to be an authentic Red State conservative," Jeffrey Bell argues in the Weekly Standard. "He is an unhyphenated Reaganite: militantly pro-life and pro-values on social issues, a pro-growth tax cutter on economic issues, and an unapologetic, spread-American-values interventionist abroad. In the years since the GOP's congressional realignment victory of 1994, no other GOP leader in either the House or Senate fully fits this description."
"If DeLay goes down because of overseas trips and/or fundraising practices that have never caused the slightest political problem for anyone else, the lesson to other Red State leaders will be clear. The four-year House winning streak, so widely taken for granted among conservatives, will not long survive DeLay. That is why Democrats and Blue State media (despite some half-hearted efforts to depict DeLay as a GOP albatross) so fervently desire his career to end as soon as possible."
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the Texas fallout from DeLay's "citations for ethical lapses and the investigations of political fund-raisers and lobbyists close to him has been hard to gauge, but there are signs of restiveness here in his hometown."
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