DELAY UP

The most striking example of DeLay’s filling the House GOP’s leadership vacuum came in mid-March, when he zinged President Clinton for his failure to answer the allegations before him and for maligning those who charge him with wrongdoing. “If the president will just tell the truth to the American people, ” said DeLay; “it will go a long way toward bringing this ordeal to an end. The truth is the only thing now that can preserve the dignity of the presidency.”

The speech, which received considerable media coverage, was the most biting criticism of Clinton on the sex scandals from a congressional Republican leader. DeLay says other Republicans have adopted the attitude that if someone is committing suicide, there’s no need to shoot him. DeLay fears Clinton isn’t committing suicide. And he had been itching to speak out for over a month anyway. The final straw was a meeting with 30 foster parents in Texas (DeLay and his wife became the legal guardians of a teenage girl last year) who all said they believed Clinton was a good role model.

One indication of DeLay’s new willingness to go it alone is that he didn’t tell Gingrich about the speech until a few hours before he delivered it. In an environment where staying “on message” is all-important, DeLay’s decision to speak out was mutiny. Yet he says he received a “wonderful” response to the speech and that it was his moderate House colleagues who were most complimentary.

DeLay told me the speech was not part of a larger strategy and that he’ll continue to speak out. As House Republicans grapple with the twin demons of a popular president and a leadership team intent on compromise, many of DeLay’s colleagues hope he will continue to assert himself. “While Tom has traditionally been a behind-the-scenes guy,” says Rep. Bill Paxon, now exiled from Gingrich’s inner circle, “many people have been encouraging him to step out.”

DeLay’s public profile is relatively low in part because he’s not a polished speaker. His likening of the EPA to the Gestapo became a favorite blunder of House Democrats, and recently he awkwardly illustrated his disgust with the White House’s shifting definition of sexual harassment by pointing to a female reporter at a press conference and wondering about the reaction if he were to grab her breast.

But DeLay has also largely stayed in the background since last July, when he was a central figure in the botched effort to dump Gingrich. The episode — still a topic du jour among Capitol Hill Republicans — left DeLay, Gingrich, and Armey bitterly divided. The most credible version of events holds that Armey and DeLay were plotting with other House Republicans to remove Gingrich, but that Armey bailed out on learning he wasn’t going to be made speaker and then tried to blame the whole thing on DeLay.

Yet it was DeLay who emerged strengthened, as many Republicans appreciated that he, unlike Armey, never denied his involvement; when he explained his version of events at a post-coup meeting, his colleagues gave him a standing ovation. While there are few signs of tension today, Gingrich, Armey, and DeLay have nowhere near the working relationship they had following the 1994 election. DeLay, in fact, has been frozen out. But he insists the failed putsch had a positive long-term outcome, spurring Gingrich to become more disciplined and to realize “that Bill Paxon and Tom DeLay were probably his best friends.”

DeLay and Gingrich have never been particularly close. Elected in 1984, when Republicans seemed a permanent minority, DeLay never cozied up to the bombastic Gingrich. Indeed, in 1989, when Gingrich sought the number-two position in the House GOP hierarchy, DeLay managed the campaign of Gingrich’s opponent, the late Ed Madigan of Illinois. Gingrich prevailed, and it cost DeLay an appointed position as deputy whip. Similarly, when DeLay sought the whip’s job after the ’94 election, Gingrich backed Bob Walker of Pennsylvania. But DeLay outhustled Walker and one other candidate, Bill McCollum of Florida, and won on the first ballot.

DeLay remains popular with his colleagues. Amid all the rumormongering about who could be ousted from the leadership, his name never comes up. One reason is ideology. DeLay is a rock-ribbed conservative, and many conservatives view him as their ally in the upper reaches of the leadership. ” God made him for the job of whip,” says Rep. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina conservative. Yet DeLay’s conservatism hasn’t alienated the GOP’s small but vocal moderate faction. Rep. Tom Campbell of California is an unabashed DeLay fan, saying, “He’s been very responsive to my concerns.” And even Rep. Chris Shays of Connecticut, who recently clashed with DeLay over campaign-finance reform, calls DeLay “the best whip a majority has had.”

DeLay’s popularity also rests on “member services.” This means DeLay plays the role of an old-fashioned political boss: No favor is too trivial to do for a fellow Republican.

Need tickets to a Redskins game? Need a place to play golf? Consider it done. Hungry in between the House’s late-night votes? Want a place to make some calls? Go to DeLay’s first-floor Capitol office, where there’s a members’ lounge stocked with phones, beer, and barbebecued chicken. DeLay also runs a job bank out of his office, connecting Republican staffers with House Republicans and the private sector. As if that weren’t enough, DeLay’s fund-raising is matched by few other Republicans: Since the 1996 election, he’s helped raise $ 1.6 million for GOP candidates and party organizations.

The one recent blemish on DeLay’s record involves James Dobson, a revered figure among religious conservatives. Dobson, who hosts a nationally syndicated daily radio program, has been severely critical of congressional Republicans for their timidity. He had a 45-minute meeting with DeLay and Armey in Washington on March 19, and it didn’t go as planned.

Armey opened the meeting with a prayer, quoted Scripture, and offered Dobson hope that a bolder agenda was ahead. But as Dobson would later describe the meeting in an open letter, DeLay was “argumentative, defensive, and accusatory. Instead of grappling with Republican failures . . . he denied that a paralysis had occurred and trumpeted the meager accomplishments of the party.”

The public lashing stung DeLay, as he credits Dobson with having “turned my life around when I first came to Congress. He brought me back to Christ.” The feud, however, proved short-lived. When DeLay told reporters the criticism ” deeply hurt my feelings,” Dobson called to patch things up. They’ve since spoken twice, and each told me he bears the other no ill will. Dobson says of DeLay, “He’s a natural ally.”

There are signs DeLay’s dust-up with Dobson has prompted him to speak out further. He’s lambasted Clinton’s apologies in Africa as the actions of a ” flower child with gray hair doing exactly what he did back in the ’60s” and charged that as a result of Democratic opposition to paperwork-reduction legislation, “Karl Marx must be turning over in his grave.” The day after the Paula Jones case was dismissed, DeLay released a statement declaring that the dismissal “may have been a short-term legal victory for the president, but the whole affair has been a long-term loss for the stature of the presidency and for our country.”

So is DeLay bidding for higher office? “I like being whip,” he says. “It’s where my talents are.” Yet people close to DeLay note that when the majority leader’s post opens up — term limits prevent Armey from staying in the job past 2000 — he’ll have a difficult time not running. House Republicans may want someone without DeLay’s liabilities as a communicator, but his allies point out that the other likely candidates aren’t exactly Reaganesque. Which is to say that the political stock of Tom DeLay — once described by two Washington Post reporters as having “the persona of a pledge leader in a southern frat house” — may be about to enter a bull market.

Matthew Rees is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.