The Law of Unintended Consequences

There's one more thing enjoyable that we smirking anti-DeLay folk can enjoy in the wake of his monumental fall from grace. It has to do with one of the most incredible political schemes that is still misunderstood: DeLay's unending efforts to illegally redistrict Texas, handing an amazing 6 House seats to Republicans last year.

In this insane effort, the Texas Democrats, stonewalled from having any power in their own government and fearing a complete constitutional coup by DeLay-planned GOP activists, literally fled their state in protest and went in to hiding. DeLay, the steward of all things just and ethical, sicked Homeland Security intelligence forces and resources on the protesting Democrats- a clear violation of any reasonable estimate of power- and, some would argue, an illegal one.

But DeLay got away with it, and his cronies snatched 6 seats by redrawing voters' district lines and weighting formerly even districts heavily in the favor of the GOP.

Now, with Tom conceding that his own party has voted him out of a leadership position, he faces a great irony from his own cold calculating: by redistricting republicans in to certain districts to gain power for his cronies, he also put more democrat voters into his own district. Whoops! Those Dems may have been a margin he could absorb a year ago. But after his indictment... he could be in a lot of trouble.

And once again- his trouble is all his own doing.

The redistricting led to the loss of six Democratic seats in Texas in 2004, but it also shifted thousands of Democratic voters to strong Republican districts. Among those, Mr. DeLay's 22nd District added several Democratic-leaning parts of Galveston County; several political analysts estimate they may have raised the district's Democratic vote around 5 percent.

"There is huge irony here," said Richard Murray, a University of Houston political scientist. "Six Democrats in Congress were eliminated, but the seventh victim may turnout to be the author of the plan."

Should Mr. DeLay survive, as expected, a March 7 primary challenge by three Republican opponents, in November he will face a former Democratic congressman, Nick Lampson, whose district once included those parts of Galveston County now in Mr. DeLay's district.