Now He Belongs To The Ages

Fare thee well, Tom DeLay. After years of diligently and thanklessly serving his donors, his lobbyists, and himself, the former House majority leader is leaving the United States Congress. He has endured one of the cruelest smear campaigns in recent political memory, a bitter and protracted effort to paint him as a criminal simply because he broke the law. And who in his position could have done otherwise? Even a heart as pure as Tom DeLay's was bound to be seduced by the corruption of Washington, a magical land where the streets are paved with kickbacks, corruption flows like sweet wine, and lobbyists condense on the morning grass with the newfallen dew. Indeed, one can hardly ride the metro these days without picking up fifty thousand dollars in illegal campaign contributions and defrauding an Indian casino. But that's not how we should remember this wrongfully-maligned warrior of the party. We should remember Tom DeLay as he was in the end: a stalwart idealist, courageously and steadfastly fighting for the one thing that mattered to him more than anything. Will America ever see his like again?