Revolutionary DeLay.

• Author: Saunders, Paul J.
• Position: No Retreat, No Surrender - Book review

Tom DeLay and Stephen Mansfield, No Retreat, No Surrender (New York: Sentinel, 2007), 189 pp., $25.95.

A SPECTER is haunting Americans--the specter of Tom DeLay. DeLay has sought to remain a major voice among conservatives after stepping down from his role as House Majority Leader and, ultimately, from his Congressional seat. But his book, which is long on invective and self-justification but short on ideas, does little to advance either his personal cause or conservatism in general. The fundamental problem is that while DeLay tries to paint himself as a conservative, he looks much more like a revolutionary.

One can excuse some of his language, in that it is now commonplace to refer to the "Reagan Revolution" and "the Republican Revolution" of 1994. And while leaders in both cases sought to shrink government, lower taxes and implement other historically conservative values, DeLay seems to display only a zeal for political combat and little else. His ideological and semantic extremism, polarized and simplistic world-view, and confrontational style overshadow any elements of his personality or philosophy that could be called "conservative."

DeLay apparently fails to see the tension between being a conservative and being a revolutionary, a problem that reflects a broader lack of self-examination and intellectual curiosity evident in the book. And DeLay is not shy about admitting to this aspect of his personality. Writing about his reaction to the death of a childhood friend, he states: "I was not deeply introspective then, and I suppose I'm still not now." Similarly, DeLay's only real acknowledgement of his own limits (aside from his drinking and womanizing, which he chronicles but then brushes aside) is his admission that he was a tactician for the Republican Revolution, not a thinker. "I am not the charm" of the revolution, he admits, "I am not the voice ... I am also not the mind. No, I am the strategist who takes the ideas and builds a way for them to become law."

If DeLay were more introspective, he might recognize in himself the makings of a Leninist Bolshevik--dismissive of Menshevik moderate Republicans' willingness to cooperate with Democrats; eager to serve as the revolutionary vanguard; seeking to raise the consciousness of ordinary Americans deceived by bourgeois liberals and determined to use any means necessary in the fight. Who knows? DeLay could even now be dreaming of his return to Washington on a special sealed train.

There is considerable irony in DeLay's revolutionary instincts given what he describes of his past. In fact, he begins the book with an event he describes as "among the...