Delay Defended

David Frum wrote on National Review Online With due respect to the always cogent editors of NR, the pithiest defense of Tom DeLay comes - from of all unlikely people - Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne. Dionne this morning puts his finger on the central and hopeless flaw in the case against DeLay: "The corporations that forked over the cash to DeLay's PAC did so not because their hearts were filled with affection for those particular Texas legislative candidates but because they recognized DeLay's power over federal legislation." (emphasis added.)

Good point

Texas law forbids corporations to give money to state candidates. The case against DeLay charges that he conspired with corporations to help them circumvent this law by routing the money through political action committees he controlled. But as Dionne acknowledges, the corporations in question did not care about Texas politics. They wanted to give to DeLay's political action committees, which was perfectly legal. It was DeLay who wanted to support the Texas candidates - which was also perfectly legal. The only way you can link these two legal transactions into one illegal transaction is by claiming that the corporations wanted to break the law. Dionne - his reporter's instincts trumping his partisan zeal - admits that of course the corporations had no such desire, and so there was no crime.

That is the problem with all campaign finance reforms. People read the law carefully, discover a loophole, and then take advantage of it.

To put this into simpler terms. Suppose a corporation hired Dionne to give a speech at their next annual meeting. Dionne then turns around and gives his fee to Democratic candidates for the Texas legislature. Has any law been broken? Obviously not. The corporation does not intend to help Texas candidates: It does so only inadvertently and indirectly, as a consequence of Dionne's decisions.

But as Dionne goes on to explain there is one big difference between my hypothetical and the actual case of Tom DeLay: "DeLay insists he did nothing illegal, but even if he wins the case, the core facts speak to the hubris of the new machine politics. Drawing congressional district lines for political purposes is an old story, but DeLay went a step further. He got the Texas Legislature to toss out a congressional map that had been drawn only two years earlier, an unprecedented act of political gamesmanship."

Actually I believe that the map drawn two years earlier was not drawn by the legislature, but by the courts, and I don't recall exactly why the legislature was unable to do it (as the Constitution requires)

DeLay's real crime is to have redesigned Texas congressional districting to beat Democrats. That's his unpardonable offense in the eyes of his accusers. On that count, he is of course guilty as charged - only it so happens that beating Democrats is not a crime in this country. Not yet anyway.

The Dems are working on that