The New Republic isn’t sure that DeLay is guilty of anything Earle is charging him with or even that the indictment is legit. But it doesn’t matter: DeLay is “intellectually primitive,” so he deserves whatever he gets. DeLay is also “mean-spirited” (unlike, say, people who wish baseless prosecutions of their political enemies well). Most of the editorial is devoted to a catalogue of DeLay’s alleged sins, the highlight being “a Machiavellian GOP-led vote to redraw Texas’s congressional districts”:

“The plan, which eventually passed, led to the defeat of four incumbent House Democrats at the hands of Republicans in 2004–and it was all masterminded by DeLay. It had long been customary for parties to redraw congressional boundaries only after the once-a-decade U.S. census. But, under DeLay’s leadership, Texas Republicans determined that they could boost their numbers in the state legislature and ram through a new state congressional map mid-decade.”

TNR has been ringing this bill for several years now. There is indeed a tradition of having one legislative redistricting a decade. But there is no hoary tradition of accepting a court-designed redistricting plan that reflects neither the political views nor the distribution of political power within the state. DeLay’s actions weren’t as sinister as the editorial, through omission, makes them out to be.