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April 04, 2006

Special Report - April 4

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

HUME: From Harry Reid to Nancy Pelosi to Howard Dean, the Democrats were on message today. The Tom DeLay departure, they said, does not end the, quote, "culture of corruption," which they say he epitomized.

And what does the congressman himself say about that?

Well, he's right here. Let's ask him.

Welcome, Congressman.

What do you say about that?

REP. TOM DELAY (R), TEXAS: I don't think they understand it.

There is no cultural corruption except theirs, lying about me, trying to work with an outrageous district attorney and being indicted on laws that don't...

HUME: You're speaking of Ronnie Earle.

DELAY: Yes.

Being indicted on laws that don't exist. They themselves announced this whole politics of personal destruction, criminalizing politics. That I think is a culture of corruption.

HUME: Let me ask you about your calculus in doing this, because it wasn't but a few weeks ago that you had won your primary quite handily, more handily than a lot of people thought.

DELAY: Yes.

HUME: And it appeared -- and you were saying you were in this to the finish. What changed?

DELAY: Well, what changed was is I just got to thinking about what was ahead of me, and I'm a realist, and I've been around a while. I know how to evaluate a campaign. And the more I looked at it, the more I felt like that this was going to be a nasty campaign for a lot of money, and my district didn't deserve it. They deserve a Republican.

By me stepping aside because the race has become a referendum on me, not on the issues, and now the liberal Democrat can't win because a good strong Republican can -- will win this seat. It's a good, strong Republican seat.

HUME: The sense here in Washington was that the Ronnie Earle charges against you might well fall and fail, and that he didn't have all that much credibility in Texas.

DELAY: Right.

HUME: But that the scandal involving the lobbyists and your former associate Jack Abramoff, and now the charges against one of your former aides and possibly against a second, was a different matter entirely.

Was that how you read it as well in terms of the politics of it?

DELAY: Well, the Abramoff stuff, I was being tarred with the brush of guilty by association.

I have nothing to do with the Abramoff affair. I've done nothing wrong. It's disappointing, and I'm very disappointed in what had went on - - but it had nothing to do with me.

The Department of Justice told my lawyers I'm not a target of the investigations. I haven't talked to any investigator. I mean, it has nothing to do with me, and time will show that.

But it does have a political -- I mean, you know, this stuff piles up and it plays its role and it has hurt my ability to be re- elected.

HUME: Now, you've spent a long time accumulating the apparent authority and influence you that you had in the House of Representatives. The president himself had said all along that he hoped that you would return as leader. Obviously, that's not to be. And now you leave the House altogether.

What's ahead for you? How do you feel about this?

DELAY: Well, I'm kind of excited about it. I think I can do more for the conservative movement and more for the Republican majority outside the House than being...

HUME: How?

DELAY: Well, I do have talents. I can take those talents and that experience and speak nationally about the conservative movement, what our agenda is. I've shown that I can help elect Republicans. I can work with people.

In this decision-making process, it was obvious to me that I still enjoy great support with the conservative organizations, conservative leaders; great support with our members in the House of Representatives. They respect me for what I've been able to accomplish, and I can take that and do some pretty good things.

HUME: I want to ask you...

DELAY: And the Democrats know it.

(LAUGHTER)

HUME: I want to ask you about a particular picture of you which was in keeping with a demeanor that you showed throughout this. This was the picture that was made of you, the mugshot that was made of you at the time of the Ronnie Earle charges. And there you are with this big grin on your face.

What's the story behind that decision to have that photo come out that way? What were you thinking?

DELAY: That's an answer to a prayer.

HUME: Tell me.

DELAY: Well, right before this humiliating process -- I don't know if you've ever been booked; it's very humiliating; you're not inclined to smile -- but it just hit me that I needed to smile.

And so right before they were to take that one take...

HUME: Why did you need to smile, in your view?

DELAY: I don't know. It just came up -- I needed to smile. And right before they took that -- and they only take one take -- I said a little prayer: Lord, let them see Jesus in me.

And when I smiled on my side...

HUME: How did it feel?

DELAY: I felt like it was the fakest smile I had ever done. But through the camera, you can see there was a glow in it.

HUME: And what was the net effect of it, in your judgment?

DELAY: It really disappointed the Democrats. They had already spent a lot of money on T-shirts and coffee mugs, and they were going to raise a lot of money with my mugshot -- and they couldn't use it.

Just like the people that did that movie while I was being investigated by Ronnie Earle, in violation of a grand jury process in Texas -- that movie, today, is worthless.

(LAUGHTER)

HUME: Because you're gone, you mean?

DELAY: Because I'm gone. They can't raise money with it.

HUME: Let me just take you back, if I can, to the activities of a couple of your former aides. Do you feel some sense of responsibility that they took the turn that they took?

DELAY: Yes. Obviously, they worked for me. When you're in a leadership office, it's a whirlwind every day. And you hire people and trust them because you've given them great responsibility to make certain decisions.

And yes, it's very disappointing that that trust was misused. And obviously he pled guilty to it. But I also know that I have well over hundreds of good, strong people working for me and have done a great job -- because I had the best staff on the Hill.

HUME: Congressman, thank you. Glad to have you.

DELAY: Sure. [snip]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TOM DELAY, (R) TX: The challenge has always been in the interest of the conservative cause and the Republican majority, and I'm more interested in growing the Republican majority than my own future.

NANCY PELOSI, (D) CA: Mr. Delay's departure from Congress is just one piece of the change that is necessary to end the culture of corruption of this Republican Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: And now some cultural observations from Fred Barnes, executive editor of "The Weekly Standard," Bill Sammon, senior White House correspondent of "The Washington Examiner" and Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio, Fox News contributors all.

Well, Delay clearly believes, said it here that with him out of the way, the culture of corruption message and whatever baggage he was towing around with him will be out of the picture. Is he right?

MARA LIASSON, NPR: I don't think -- Well you just heard Nancy Pelosi, they're not going to give up on the culture of corruption. It does remove one big symbol. Kind of the poster boy for the culture of corruption is gone. They can't raise money around Tom DeLay that they would have before. He was a rallying cry for the Democrats. So that is gone. I think that he now can spend all the money that he collected for his own campaign on his legal defense, and he can now raise money for other Republicans. So in that sense it's probably a net plus for the Republicans' efforts to maintain the House.

HUME: They're better off than they were 24 hours ago. But not .

LIASSON: Yes. Yeah.

BILL SAMMON, "WASHINGTON EXAMINER": It's a short-term political gain for Democrats. This is their one good news cycle out of this is DeLay is out. After that it gets worse, because the fact that he's out means as Mara said they can't use him to fundraise, they can't use them as their favorite whipping boy. Reminds me when Newt Gingrich left. It's hard to demonize someone like a Denny Hastert or a Bill Frist. It's easy to demonize a Tom DeLay or a Newt Gingrich. They are deprived of somebody that they can rally against. And you know, you can almost see the crestfallen looks on the Democrats' faces today as they said it's not over. This isn't the end of it.

LIASSON: You're right on that one.

SAMMON: It reminded me of when the Dubai port deals went away. And all the Democrats said wait a minute, this isn't over -- It was over, and this is over as well.

LIASSON: There might be more indictments, and the scandals are not over.

FRED BARNES, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": There always might be more indictments, but I think the evidence points now to the fact that DeLay is not going to be indicted. There was nothing in the Tony Rudy plea agreement that suggested that DeLay was going to be indicted. Jack Abramoff through friends has sent word to DeLay, and I've heard it from friends of Abramoff, too, that he's going to say nothing that would implicate DeLay. So I think DeLay's probably out of the woods.

All in all, though, the demise of DeLay is very good for Democrats. There is no question about it. Not today particularly, but really the day he stepped down as majority leader. He was an incredibly effective majority leader like no one has seen in years and years and years. And it's a particular loss of George Bush that he's not there anymore, because I happen to be with a group of reporters who interviewed him for a little over an hour this afternoon.

HUME: Who?

BARNES: Tom DeLay. He hadn't exactly been hiding today, that's for sure. Far from it. But his view of the House of Representatives is that if all things are going well when you have a Republican president, that it should be an echo chamber for the president. It certainly hasn't been that since he stepped down as majority leader, and I think President Bush is going to miss him a lot.

LIASSON: But that was the loss. In other words, we could have been having this conversation then.

HUME: What you're saying .

BARNES: Here's what's important about DeLay.

HUME: Leaving.

BARNES: Being gone. The truth is DeLay took some polls, one in December, one a couple of weeks after the primary, and that one was worse, and he said it would be about a 50/50 chance of my winning. But he knew if he stepped down, Republicans would hold the seat.

HUME: Does that make real political sense? That any Republican as he suggested will be a stronger candidate and a likely winner now that he's gone?

BARNES: I think that's true, and I would have discounted that, that he's sacrificing himself. That's often hard to take when you hear it from politicians, except if you know about the re-apportionment of Texas, which got all these new extra Republican seats, one of those who sacrificed Republicans from his own district was Tom DeLay which led to him having a much tougher re-election in 2004 than had been expected.

LIASSON: I think he only got 55 percent.

BARNES: He only got 55 because he gave up a lot in his district.

LIASSON: However, George Bush won by 64 percent. It's a Republican district.

BARNES: Not as Republican as it was before.

LIASSON: That's right. Not as Republican. That was a sacrifice he made for his party for sure, but I do think that this is a district where now Nick Lampson has a much, much tougher time.

SAMMON: But by DeLay goading the Democrats today and saying that Barbra Streisand and George Soros, their money is going to instantly dry up and this guy's going to lose. I think that will be a motivation for Democrats to actually see it through and maybe have the guy .

HUME: Nick Lampson?

SAMMON: Well, just to spite him.

BARNES: It doesn't work that way.

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