by Rod D. Martin
September 19, 2013

KVUE reports this morning that Tom DeLay’s horribly wrongful conviction has been overturned on appeal.

A good man is finally vindicated.

DeLay was prosecuted by an unconstitutional office of the Texas government led by partisan Democrat hack Ronnie Earle.  Earle is now mercifully retired, but his legacy of political prosecutions has lived on long after him:  in his time in office, he went after basically every prominent Republican in Texas, losing most of the time but never missing a chance to try to criminalize politics for those with whom he disagreed.  No one lifted a finger to stop him:  they all feared they’d be next.

You can criticize DeLay’s politics if you like, but you can’t criticize his courage under fire, his tenacity in the face of evil, or his Christian walk, which only seemed to grow as the harsh years passed.  It’s also hard to criticize the grounds for his prosecution, which have now been deemed lawful and right.  Tom DeLay gave Texas its first honest redistricting and Republican majorities in its state legislature and its Congressional delegation.

Not so noble or effective were the myriads of Republicans who scattered at the first sign of trouble, throwing DeLay under the bus on a renegade hack’s say-so.  They did the same thing to Gingrich, the House he led agreeing to censure him and fine him $300,000 — the highest fine in this history of the House — for a “violation” for which the IRS later fully exonerated him.  When was the last time you saw or heard of the IRS fully clearing anyone for anything?

Gingrich was innocent.  So was DeLay.  And their Republican colleagues fled the instant there was an accusation.

It is a key distinction between Republicans and Democrats that we clean our house, they don’t.  We rightly expect a higher standard of our leaders, and increasingly, they could not possibly expect a lower standard of theirs.

But there’s a time for discipline and a time for defending your own.  Discipline is for the guilty.  Throwing your own guys under the bus on the say-so of their political enemies is just cowardly and stupid.  Democrats have figured out this is how we play, and they’ve made a cottage industry out of destroying the careers of our most effective leaders for two decades now.  We are fools to let them.

Today, though, Tom DeLay is a free man, vindicated.  I am proud to call him my friend, and I am also proud that under my leadership, the National Federation of Republican Assemblies gave him its highest award in 2007, while this process was ongoing.  We did the right thing, he did the right thing, and we are all better for it.

By the way, when he got the news, he was kneeling in prayer.  God does things like that.