DeLay's nutty rantings fitting end to GOP year

Rep. Tom DeLay appeared on "Meet the Press" yesterday determined to end the year with a bang, not a whimper. He called the war in Iraq "exciting," and compared Democrats to morons, hippies and (gasp!) the French.

And then he started saying really ridiculous things. Check out this exchange between DeLay and host Tim Russert:

MR. RUSSERT: [President Clinton's] first budget submission which passed without one Republican vote, you'll give him no credit for that?

REP. DeLAY: None at all because it raised taxes and made it even more difficult for us to come back in 1995 and change his economic policies and get us back to balance.

MR. RUSSERT: As long as we have these $500 billion deficits, will you not introduce any more tax-cut legislation?

REP. DeLAY: Tax cuts will lower the deficit and bring us back to balance.

This represents by far the most ludicrous exchange during the interview. First DeLay attempted to take credit for the record economic expansion under the Clinton administration, and then he attempted to once again sell the idea that reduced revenue will actually lower the budget deficit. Besides being mathematically challenged, DeLay's faith-based economic theories are contrary to all the actual experience we've had with supply-side economics. After three successive years of massive tax cuts, the federal budget deficit stands at roughly $500 billion, the largest it's ever been – are we missing something here?

el - In the Reagan administration after they saw the disasterous budget effects of the first tax cut the the administration consented to large tax increases, something you never hear the GOP admit to.

Apparently sensing he hadn't gone far enough with his comparisons to morons, hippies and the French, DeLay kicked his rhetoric into a higher gear later in the show and compared Democrats to communists because they're pushing for a balanced budget. This statement is the "Guernica" of hateful political diatribes. What better way to cap off a command performance than some good old-fashioned red-baiting?

el - After Bush and Cheney, DeLay is the most powerful man in the GOP. He has more power than Rep. Hastert whom he had appointed as the House Speaker and Sen. Frist who is still establishing himself as Senate majority leader.

President Bush promised in his inaugural address to "change the tone in Washington," and he has – under the Bush administration, things have transformed from typical partisan bickering to outright political garbage-throwing.

Anyone who opposed the president's ill-planned rush to war was labeled a traitor.

Anyone who dared question the president's overstatements of intelligence information was labeled a traitor and a wimp.

Anyone who opposed tax cuts was labeled a tax-and-spend liberal. And a traitor.

And the list goes on.