DeLay: This Is the Day

In his interview with Time, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay rationalizes why he's a whining little quitter who knows he'd get his ass kicked in November if he didn't drop out of the race.

Here's the money quote, (which Time's Mike Allen would have challenged, had he not chosen to violate the Ten Commandments of Covering Religion):

My main point was that this country was built on morals and religion. Our greatest leaders were very strong believers. There is a connection between religion and politics, and religion and government. There has to be for this country to have accomplished all it's accomplished and for its future. How many times have the great leaders—Ronald Reagan, Roosevelt, Lincoln, George Washington—have said there is a connection between morals and religion. And there has to be. The people that go to church understand that a country has to be based on some sort of religion and fear of God because they understand that.

Any member of Congress so ignorant of or willing to distort the beliefs of the general who fought the Revolutionary War and then led the country as its first president, doesn't deserve to be in Congress. Here are some of Washington's actual thoughts about religion and morals:

There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

To give opinions unsupported by reasons might appear dogmatical.

Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.

...I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.

...the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction. (This in response to the day's DeLay analogues, who whined that the Constitution didn't mention their boyfriend, Jesus).

In discussing how events might unfold, he said of "the great ruler of events":

...we may safely trust the issue to him, without perplexing ourselves to seek for that which is beyond human ken, only taking care to perform the parts assigned to us in a way that reason and our own conscience approve of.

You can find more here. And more here. One of the things DeLay will be packing up from his Washington office is a plaque that eloquently combines mystery and certitude in referring to the magical return of Jesus. "This could be the day," it says. Well, apparently, it didn't come soon enough for Tom. ("Where's your savior, now?")

Instead, he's running away because earthly justice is coming for him and making it impossible for him to remain in office. In his attempt to hijack Washington's clear preference for reason over religion in political matters, DeLay is leaving office as he attained and held it: As a liar.