WASHINGTON — House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has launched a characteristically defiant response to attacks on his ethics and leadership, even as the controversy threatens to compete with the Republican legislative agenda when Congress returns this week from spring recess.
As criticism of the 57-year-old Texan intensified last week with a blast from the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board and the unveiling of an anti-DeLay television ad campaign by nonprofit groups, he began a counterattack designed to shore up his backing in the Republican House caucus and among social conservatives.
In a meeting with the heads of several social conservative organizations, DeLay sought support in a fight that he said was aimed at ending the GOP majority in Congress and thwarting the social conservative movement. Some responded immediately.
"The only fire behind all that smoke generated by the leftist attacks is their burning hatred of a good man," wrote Morton C. Blackwell, a prominent conservative, in a posting on the American Conservative Union's website. "You and I must do all we can to make sure any politician who hopes to have conservative support ... had better be in the forefront as we attack those who attack Tom DeLay."
Democrats are promising to quickly bring up ethical questions surrounding DeLay when Congress returns to work Monday. And the concern among some Republicans is that DeLay may step into a political trap by fiercely responding.
Democrats, Republicans say, are determined to further raise DeLay's national political profile. And DeLay is not the sort of politician to seek to lower his profile in the face of conflict.
"He draws energy from these fights," said one GOP strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He sees this in terms of good and evil: He is all good and his opponents are all evil."
Until now, one House Republican leadership aide said, DeLay's problems have not been serious enough to distract the caucus from its efforts to push forward President Bush's legislative agenda.
"But it could very possibly become a distraction" in the coming week, said the aide, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.
On Thursday, DeLay underscored his role as one of the social movement's more prominent political leaders, issuing a hard-edged reaction to the death of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose husband won a long court battle to have her feeding tube removed.
