Hostage of the Idiom? - Today's Tom DeLay and the "New" GOP

What's to be done with an old exterminator when the parade has finally ended?

Unemployed Texas Exterminator, Tom DeLay (image source )

Well, to get things rolling with this bitter sweet posting, MeanMesa temporarily relinquishes command to our favorite dictionary.  

• idiom: a style or form of artistic expression that is characteristic of an individual, a period or movement, or a medium or instrument

One of the many "rancid threads" which delivered the country into the larcenous grip of the autocracy originated, predictably, in Texas.  The mechanism of this particular insult to American democracy was what may be over generously referred to as "redistricting."  

In this process, those in power (power resulting from whatever scheme) redraw the lines of what are called "districts" in a manner which re-organizes voters into favorable, new electoral blocks.  The new "district" boundaries are craftily 

• craftily: marked by subtlety and guile

derived from an intricate examination of previous election demographics.  Once in place, voters from opposing parties are concentrated in "sacrificed districts," while more mixed demographics are "shoe horned" into districts where the mix will be, at a minimum, "just barely" tipped to the advantage of those in power.  The result will be an increase in the number of House members from the party in power and a decrease in the number of House members elected by the "sacrificed districts."

The comedy is revealed when the new "district" boundaries are displayed on the actual land where they have been so cleverly imposed.  The new "boundary lines" run along abandoned sidewalks and between old trees, splitting trash cans and swing sets along the way.  Meanwhile, at least "meanwhile in the case of Ex-Exterminator, Tom DeLay in his medieval Texas," furious flocks of new, gum chewing Republican House members were dispatched to Washington to assist in the oligarchic plan to loot the Treasury.

This isn't funny.

However, this was precisely the ante coughed up by the Exterminator which so deeply endeared 

• endeared : to cause to become beloved or admired

him with the not only the autocrat but with the other cronies and crooks who were in power at the time.  In no time, the Exterminator had become House Majority Leader.  Normally, this would have been an unavoidable scandal given the precarious history of Majority Leader DeLay, but the disgrace was gracefully re-framed and rehabilitated by the comparisons of the moment.

The position directly above DeLay during his tenure as House Majority Leader was, of course, Speaker of the House, and for the Republicans during the autocracy, this job of being Speaker amounted primarily to being the "head crook" during the process of "emptying the Treasury."

The Republicans had already thoroughly "shown their colors" with House Speakers such a Newt Gingrich and Denny "Mr. Sausage" Hastert, so the addition of a stinky little fellow such as the Exterminator caused little public angst or disruption.

Once comfortably situated in this position, the Exterminator launched his self-enrichment program with full fervor.  He was sleeping the lobbyist/crook Jack Abramoff, screwing Indians out of their casinos, zipping off to St. Andrews for a high cost golf adventure and generally squeezing every dime he could find into his own pockets.

Tom "The Exterminator" DeLay gradually forsake his previous resume as a bug-killer to take a new title: "The Hammer."  He gleefully coerced, threatened and assaulted other House members -- always under the full protection of the autocrat and his cronies -- to channel ever more tax money into his "conservative," Texan political coffers.

The troubling "idiom?"

Constantly, during this time of raping, pillaging and plundering, the already heavily soiled Republicans were vomiting forth a relentless stream of "Constitutionalism," "Family Values," "Real Americans," and so on, "talking points" in an unending campaign to inflame every hill billy and bigot across the country from Kentucky to Arizona.  Under cover of the politically distracted frenzy of gastric nationalism which followed, the Republican "money bins" grew to the point of bursting.

The "neo-con game" of the moment was simple.  It amounted to a three part scheme:

• a. commit every possible crime as brazenly and rapidly as possible
• b. accuse the other side of committing the very same crimes, and,
• c. keep the hill billies and other bigots, although in descending poverty, inebriated with the idea that they were, in fact, flourishing.

Well, The Exterminator finally got nailed with a little money laundering.  It rings in resonance with the demise of the Late Al Capone.  Although dozens of murdered corpses littered the man's wake, the Justice Department's first -- and lasting -- success in Al Capone's prosecution derived from tax evasion.  The same may be true with the conviction of Mr. DeLay for money laundering.  Oh, how the mighty have fallen...

It'll do.

MeanMesa quotes the now historically revered and, finally, otherwise famous, Mullah Nassr Edin; Prison is prison.