DeLay: Scalia Made “Stupid” Ruling

Yes, Justice Antonin Scalia did stab Tom DeLay in the back — it must be hard for DeLay to see it any other way. And he isn’t happy.

From an interview with Byron York:

…courts up to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected DeLay’s arguments, and then Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who handles such matters for the Fifth Circuit, rejected DeLay’s argument in a matter of hours. I asked DeLay if he had a problem with Scalia’s handling of the case. “Yes, I do,” DeLay said. “He obviously spent no time looking at what’s happening in the court in which he has oversight. Within three hours, he denied this stay.”

“You can always count on the judiciary to make stupid rulings,” DeLay told me. “Not only stupid, but dangerous.”

And there’s another gem from the interview. In Tom DeLay’s statement withdrawing from the race, he explained that his move to Virginia was “irrevocable” — there was simply no way he was ever going to reenter the race in Texas, no matter what a handful of federal judges said. It would have been “sheer hypocrisy,” he said.

But, well, that irrevocability wasn’t the real reason DeLay finally bowed out. He was still polling badly:

Before he made up his mind, DeLay commissioned a poll of voters in the 22nd District. “My negatives were still high,” he told me, even though he retained a sizable core of strong supporters. The poll also found that several other Republican candidates would have a better chance against Democrat Nick Lampson. Even though DeLay believed he could still win if he mounted a vigorous campaign, the poll reinforced his belief that getting out was the right thing to do.