{"id":7050,"date":"2006-04-04T17:05:26","date_gmt":"2006-04-04T21:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7050"},"modified":"2006-04-04T17:05:26","modified_gmt":"2006-04-04T21:05:26","slug":"what-would-jesus-do-to-tell-delay-to-knock-it-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/what-would-jesus-do-to-tell-delay-to-knock-it-off\/","title":{"rendered":"What would Jesus do — to tell DeLay to knock it off"},"content":{"rendered":"

Somewhat unexpectedly, the common thread of the last 24 hours for [tag]Tom DeLay[\/tag] is [tag]religion[\/tag]. The man who’s been up to his ears in political corruption and ethical transgressions throughout his political career seems to believe that it’s not his lawyers who’ll get him through the next several months; it’s his faith. And he’s milking it<\/a> for all it’s worth.<\/p>\n

TIME: Your smiling mug shot — what made you think of that and what do you think the consequence of that has been?<\/p>\n

DeLay: Oh, I don’t know. I said a little prayer. First of all, you only get one take. It’s a very humiliating thing, to be booked. And I said a little prayer before I actually did the fingerprint thing, and the picture. And my prayer was basically: “Let people see [tag]Christ[\/tag] through me. And let me smile.” Now, when they took the shot, from my side, I thought it was fakiest smile I’d ever given. But through the camera, it was glowing. I mean, it had the right impact. Poor old left couldn’t use it at all. They had all kind of things planned, they’d spent a lot of money. It made me feel kind of good that all those plans went down the toilet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was one of the more interesting responses of DeLay’s recent interviews. You’ll notice, for example, that DeLay said he was “glowing,” not because his [tag]faith[\/tag] saw him through this trying ordeal, but because the “poor old left couldn’t use” his mug shot. DeLay apparently worships at the First Church of Spite. I hear it’s a heartwarming place.<\/p>\n

I don’t know DeLay personally, so I obviously couldn’t speak to the depths of his beliefs. But it’s nevertheless amazing to me to see DeLay hold himself out as a vessel for God who also happens to crush his opponents, lie as a matter of habit, and engage in some of the more nefarious corruption schemes we’ve seen out of Congress in quite a while.<\/p>\n

And DeLay’s religious right cohorts love it. The appearance didn’t generate a great deal of media attention, but DeLay did two interviews first thing this morning. The first was on Fox News (natch). The second, however, was on TV preacher [tag]Pat Robertson[\/tag]’s [tag]700 Club[\/tag]<\/a>, where DeLay told Robertson and his viewers that he “fasted” before making the decision about his resignation.<\/p>\n

Digby suggested<\/a> today that DeLay could go to jail for his misconduct, but he would “just do a [tag]Chuck Colson[\/tag]. It’s quite the racket these rightwing [tag]Christian[\/tag]s have going.” Oddly enough, DeLay has already<\/i> pulled a Chuck Colson — only in this case, DeLay found religion and then engaged in corrupt and unethical behavior, whereas Colson did it the other way around.<\/p>\n

I guess that’s the principal difference between Republicans in the Nixon era and the Bush era — now they find God before<\/i> their shameful misconduct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Somewhat unexpectedly, the common thread of the last 24 hours for [tag]Tom DeLay[\/tag] is [tag]religion[\/tag]. The man who’s been up to his ears in political corruption and ethical transgressions throughout his political career seems to believe that it’s not his lawyers who’ll get him through the next several months; it’s his faith. And he’s milking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7050\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}