The True Believer
             By BOB HERBERT, New York Whore Times, Matt Drudge, Editor

          Tom DeLay spent many long months hiding in the tall grass and chuckling
          while George W. Bush traveled the country trying to spread the fiction of
          compassionate conservatism.

          There is no room for compassion in the politics of Tom DeLay. Newt Gingrich was
          a pussycat compared with this compulsively combative congressman from Texas
          who keeps braided whips in his office (he's the House majority whip, responsible
          for keeping the G.O.P. troops in line) and whose nickname is the Hammer.

          Mr. DeLay has exhibited more clout in the House than anyone, including
          the speaker. He led the impeachment charge for the Republicans. And
          yes, his politics are extreme. Anyone trying to move further to the right
          than Tom DeLay is in danger of falling into the void.

          After the Columbine tragedy Mr. DeLay took to the floor of Congress to
          mount an impassioned defense of guns and to rant against birth control,
          day-care centers and the teaching of evolution. (Example: "We have
          sterilized and contracepted our families down to sizes so small that the
          children we do have are so spoiled with material things that they come to
          equate the receiving of the material with love.")

          Apparently, in Mr. DeLay's world view, it is better to have more and poorer children.

          After lying low for so long, Mr. DeLay was eager to resume his hard-right ways and
          start exercising his clout in the high-octane atmosphere of a George W. Bush victory.
          But as we know, a weird thing happened. The presidential election ended in a virtual
          deadlock and the right-wing hallelujahs had to be put on hold.
         Which did not make the Hammer happy.

          He quickly decided to go to the mattresses. Just days after the election,
          he sent a staff memo to Republicans in Congress that virtually invited
          them to try to overturn Florida's electoral votes if it turned out that they
          were for Al Gore. The memo said the House and Senate could reject a
          state's electoral votes if they decided the votes were tainted.

          The Times's Alison Mitchell wrote that a Republican close to Mr. DeLay
          "described the memorandum as similar to the `impeachment book' his
          office sent out in 1998 when Mr. DeLay began providing information
          about impeachment to Republicans."

          Last week, when a thuggish gathering of Republican demonstrators tried
          to shut down the hand-recount operations in Miami-Dade County, it
          turned out that key DeLay operatives were right there. As The Wall
          Street Journal reported:

          "Right up front on television images of the event last Wednesday were
          Thomas Pyle, an aide to G.O.P. Rep. Tom DeLay, and Michael Murphy,
          who works for a DeLay fund-raising committee."

          All of this is particularly ominous because it is becoming clearer by the
          day that George W. Bush is the incredible shrinking front man of the
          G.O.P. He may have espoused compassionate conservatism on the
          stump, but Tom DeLay and his crowd (and their right-wing counterparts
          in the Senate and around the country) are committed to keeping the
          G.O.P. mean and extreme. Don't look for W. to stop them.

          We keep hearing from the commentators and others that most Americans
          are in the broad center of the political spectrum. But you won't find Tom
          DeLay and his hard-right followers in that vast and reasonably tolerant
          terrain. Mr. DeLay, a onetime exterminator from Sugar Land, Tex., is a
          card-carrying extremist. He has called the Environmental Protection
          Agency the "Gestapo" of the government. He has fought restrictions on
          pesticides and toxic waste and tried mightily to undermine the Clean Air
          and Clean Water acts.

          In one of his furious fights against gun control, he declared: "The government,
          hopefully, would never turn on the people. But it's human nature for it to do
          that if you don't have the deterrent of citizens bearing arms."

          When Bob Dole was trying to figure out a way to end the stalemate
          during the government shutdown crisis in early 1996, Mr. DeLay reacted
          with an expletive and declared, "It's time for all-out war."

          Americans should get to know Tom DeLay. Know him well. He is a
          hard- right true believer and one of the most powerful men in the government.
         And he has the savvy and the energy that George W. does not.