DeLay Uses Campaign Tactics to Fight Charges

You Snarl baby I dont think so, the only one on this page that snarls is the one that is indicted.

DeLay Uses Campaign Tactics to Fight Charges

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 6, 2005; Page A07

With his future tied to the outcome of a criminal indictment in Texas, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) is using an extraordinary array of campaign tactics to try to win his court battle and save his political career.

Other politicians caught in a legal bind have tried to make a similar case that they were victims of prosecutorial excess or partisan attack. But few have done it to the degree of DeLay and his allies, who have launched an aggressive campaign to portray the former House majority leader as both a victim of a vendetta and an irreplaceable champion of conservatism.

By so doing, DeLay's team hopes to accomplish three critical goals: undermine the stature of his Democratic prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, in the minds of potential Texas jurors; win over DeLay's suburban Houston constituents before a potentially difficult reelection campaign; and retain his political base in Washington before a planned return to power.

The effort includes television advertisement that portrays Earle as a snarling Rottweiler, a staff of well-connected communications aides and skillful lawyers, e-mail blitzes, talking points for friendly radio hosts, speeches and a bulging legal defense fund. >>>cont