Word: delay
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When legal and ethical questions began spinning around House majority leader Tom DeLay last year, President George W. Bush was publicly supportive. Privately, though, he questioned his fellow Texan's mojo. Bush had scored 10 points higher than DeLay in the Representative's district in 2004, and that was only after Bush had recorded a telephone message to help rally local Republicans. "I can't believe I had to do robocalls for him," the President said bitingly to an Oval Office visitor...
...know Bush well, the remark said it all about the longtime chill between the two pols?a distance that is only sure to grow with former lobbyist Jack Abramoff's guilty plea. Both camps describe the two conservative Texan's relationship as professional?an alliance, not a friendship. "DeLay admires Bush's leadership but still thinks of himself as the strongest conservative on the block," a DeLay friend says. "They perceive DeLay as a bull in a china shop. They appreciate him as their protector and retriever." Like many of his colleagues on Capitol Hill, DeLay suffers under what officials...
Even before DeLay's announcement that he would abdicate his leadership post, top Bush advisers tell TIME, the President's inner circle always treated DeLay as a necessary burden. He may have had an unmatched grip on the House and Washington lobbyists, but DeLay is not the kind of guy?in background and temperament?the President feels comfortable with. Of the former exterminator, a Republican close to the President's inner circle says, "They have always seen him as beneath them, more blue collar. He's seen as a useful servant, not someone you would want to vacation with...
During Bush's first run for the presidency, that uneasy relationship was already on display. Eager to establish himself as a compassionate conservative, Bush took an oblique shot at DeLay while campaigning in California in 1999, saying of House Republicans, "I don't think they ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor." DeLay never got a major speaking role at either of Bush's conventions. Still, the White House has had no qualms about using him to advance its agenda, and he has delivered. Without DeLay's deftness as the Hammer, Bush could have lost battles...
...with the possibility that DeLay could be indicted in the Abramoff case, the Administration fears that the scandal could tarnish all Republicans and even hand the House to the Democrats. "They're worried about the Congress," an adviser said after talking to White House aides, "and they're worried about themselves." Although DeLay's forfeiture of his leadership post makes things easier for the White House, the Abramoff saga will continue to be a problem. Bracing for the worst, Administration officials obtained from the Secret Service a list of all the times Abramoff entered the White House complex, and they...