Newsweek political writer Holly Bailey really had an I Am Liberal, Hear Me Roar moment while blogging for The Gaggle on Tom DeLay’s appearance on ABC’s Dancing With The Stars:

The last time we saw Tom DeLay, he was a scandal-ridden leper slinking back to Texas with nothing left but that giant, threatening smile that made even people who liked him kind of hate him. He had lost it all ─ his post as house majority leader, his congressional seat, his standing reservation at Signatures, Jack Abramoff’s expense-account lunchery for Republicans headed for ignominy, or prison, or both. Perhaps worst of all, DeLay had lost his mojo as “The Hammer,” the one guy you didn’t dare cross on Capitol Hill and expect to survive. Until the end, he cast himself as a victim of power-hungry Democrats, even though it was Republicans who ultimately threw him overboard. He knew how it worked — after all, he’d done the same thing to Newt Gingrich. And so DeLay went, but he didn’t like it, and like a character straight out of a Sergio Leone spaghetti Western, he promised to get justice and clear his name. “I’ll be back,” DeLay vowed.
Turns out he was right. Last night Tom DeLay made his comeback, and truly, it was a low moment in our nation’s long and stormy history, by which we mean it was totally and completely awesome in every imaginable way. Disgraced politicians choose many paths of redemption, but never did we imagine his resurrection would involve gratuitous booty shaking, cringe-inducing lip syncing and a knee slide straight out of Footloose 2: The Grandpa Years.

I really didn’t want to see DeLay sliding around either, but his dancing was much better than Cloris Leachman’s — or Tucker Carlson’s. Bailey wasn’t done name-dropping Republican scandal figures: “Suddenly, there is DeLay on the dance floor, and he is wearing … what is he wearing? It’s an all-brown vest suit with zebra trim and a little bit of rhinestone. It is very Boogie Nights. Somewhere in Idaho, Larry Craig is leaning in very close to his television.”