Knight Ridder: DeLay remains unrepentant as he exits House

WASHINGTON - Tom DeLay, the fallen House majority leader, used his farewell speech Thursday to deride compromise, defend partisanship and attack liberalism.

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The Texas Republican has blamed a partisan prosecutor in Austin for laying him low. And Democrats accuse him of demeaning Congress by trading favors with lobbyists and displaying unprecedented zeal for quashing opponents.
Republicans packed their side of the House, and many sported gold lapel pins shaped like hammers to honor the nickname DeLay picked up when he was the party's chief vote-counter. At a weekly lunch with Texas Republicans, he got a going-away present: a framed photo of him with the state's freshmen Republicans - a group he called the "Five Desperados" - who owe their jobs to a controversial redistricting plan he engineered in Austin. "We're all sad to see him go," said one of them, Rep. Kenny Marchant.

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He called himself the victim of "guilt by association" with scoundrel-lobbyists such as Jack Abramoff and Tony Rudy, who served earlier as DeLay's deputy chief of staff. He called it "glorious" that U.S. forces had managed to kill terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - and puckishly compared himself to the al-Qaida leader.

"As I've proven, you cut the head off the snake and it has an impact," he said with a laugh.

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In his farewell address, DeLay pointedly broke with the traditional homage that departing leaders pay to the "`good old days' of political harmony and across-the-aisle camaraderie." No, he said, partisanship and rancor reflect a healthy democracy.

"You show me a nation without partisanship, and I'll show you a tyranny," he said.

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