Rep. Tom DeLay: Each story strips away a layer of armor for him. He still has strong support. I just don't think he has much, if any, armor left.

Sunday's @issue section of the AJC had one heck of a good article on Rep. DeLay. The following are some excerpts:

Tom DeLay: More nails driven into 'Hammer'

By Bob Dart and Chuck Lindell
Cox News Service
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
April 10, 2005

Emboldened sharks of Capitol Hill are circling closer to Tom DeLay.

Already engulfed in enough ethics and legal cases to keep his three lawyers busily racking up billable hours, the House majority leader was hit with new revelations last week, just before the Texas Republican led a congressional delegation to Rome for Pope John Paul II's funeral.

The Washington Post reported that DeLay took a trip to Moscow in 1997 that was paid for by business interests lobbying for the Russian government. And The New York Times reported that the GOP leader's political action and campaign committees have paid his wife and daughter more than $500,000 since 2001.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) joked to reporters last week that DeLay will be "thrown out and forgotten too soon" --- meaning before the 2006 elections. "He has become a problem for Republicans and that's the unforgivable sin."

DeLay seems caught up in a struggle to survive similar to those that sank former House Speakers Jim Wright (D-Texas) and Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and former Democratic Whip Tony Coelho of California.

"You're starting to see people pull away from him in public settings," said a Republican congressman who did not want to be named. "The press has made him radioactive."

The charges threaten to bring an ignominious climax to a remarkable story of unexpected metamorphosis: How a small-town bug exterminator and hard-drinking Texas state legislator nicknamed "Hot Tub Tom," known more for parties than politics, became "The Hammer," the sometimes reviled, sometimes respected, but widely feared Republican leader of the House, a stalwart of the religious right and one of the most powerful men in America.

"I don't see any wavering of the support for the leader," said Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the House GOP whip, after a party caucus this week. "I think a lot of members think he's taking arrows for the rest of us. There has been a long effort to demonize Tom DeLay after Newt Gingrich left this building."

Son of 'a wildcatter'

Tom DeLay, 57, has always been molded and motivated by family.

His father, reared in a teetotaling Baptist home, made up for lost drinking time as an adult. The DeLay children later recalled him drinking a quart of Scotch many nights and dispensing discipline with a belt. "My father was a wildcatter straight out of the movie 'Giant,' " said Tom DeLay in a biography, "The Hammer: God, Money and the Rise of the Republican Congress." "He was a boisterous, domineering alcoholic."

In 1956, Charlie DeLay moved his family to Venezuela, where he was an oil field supervisor. It was there that caballeros taught young Tom DeLay to crack a bullwhip, a skill he would later display for visitors to his office in the U.S. Capitol.

Charlie DeLay sent his son to Baylor University, a strict Baptist institution in Waco, where drinking and dancing were banned. But the rambunctious boy collided with the religious culture. DeLay was urged not to return after his sophomore year.

He transferred to the University of Houston, married Christine Furrh and graduated with a degree in biology in 1970. Student deferments and a high draft lottery number kept him out of the Vietnam War. He went to work for a chemical company, mixing rat poison and other pesticides. Two years later, he bought a company named Albo and started his own exterminating business.

In the 1970s, wearing leisure suits and sporting sideburns and a mustache, DeLay became involved in GOP politics. He was elected to the Texas House in 1978.

"He was known as 'Hot Tub Tom.' He lived in a house that came to be known as 'Macho Manor,' " said Lou Dubose, co-author of "The Hammer" in an interview with the liberal magazine "Mother Jones."

"He never seemed destined for leadership," said Dubose.

But then the fire ants marched in. Or more specifically, the Environmental Protection Agency banned Mirex, among the few pesticides that stop the fire ants that have long plagued Dixie. Declaring the EPA "the Gestapo of the government," the exterminator from Sugar Land decided to run for Congress and fight such federal foolishness. He was elected to the U.S. House in 1984.

Initially, his political career followed a familiar path. He later described drinking up to a dozen martinis a night at the receptions and fund-raisers on Capitol Hill during his freshman session.

Then Frank Wolf, a Republican from Virginia, began to counsel his young colleague. He gave DeLay, then 38, a video on Christian fatherhood produced by James Dobson, the religious psychologist. Like another Texas politician, George W. Bush, DeLay was profoundly changed by a religious message. He swore off hard liquor and became a faithful churchgoer.

"It told me what a jerk I really was," he told The Washington Post about the video. "I started crying because I had missed my daughter's whole childhood."

GOP's 'most potent whip'

But turning the other cheek has not been DeLay's political philosophy. Rising through House GOP ranks, he became the whip --- responsible for counting votes and keeping members in line with leadership. If any Republican was wavering, DeLay often knew how to pressure a change of heart.

"No doubt, hands down, no question, he was the most potent whip we've had in our lifetimes," said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar for the American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

But his hardball game has drawn accusations of foul play. He was admonished three times last year by the House ethics committee. Three of his associates have been indicted on state charges in Texas about campaign finance abuses. And lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a longtime DeLay associate, is being investigated by the Justice Department for his efforts in killing the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act, which was opposed by his clients, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and eLottery Inc.

In every case, DeLay has emphatically denied any wrongdoing. He said House Democrats are using attacks on him to mask their lack of legislative goals.

"All they can try is to tear down the House and burn it in order to gain power," he said. "Not power to further any agenda but power for its own sake."

Delay's supporters believe the attacks on him have a broader purpose of political intimidation.

"Tom DeLay is being targeted by the Democrats and the media for the same reason Stonewall Jackson always told his troops to shoot the brave ones first --- because it will scare the others," said Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas).

But the continuing charges may be taking a toll on DeLay.

"I'm sure there are [Republicans] who thought, 'Let this stuff die away.' Well, it's never going to die away," said Ornstein. "Each [story] strips away a layer of armor, a layer of protection for him. He still has strong support. I just don't think he has much, if any, armor left."