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Monday, Oct. 03, 2005 By KAREN TUMULTY, MIKE ALLEN
THE HAMMER FALLS: DeLay speaks to reporters after resigning as leader
JAY L. CLENDENIN / POLARIS FOR TIME
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The news that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay had been dreading for months was brought by an aide, who interrupted DeLay's weekly lunch with Dennis Hastert in the House Speaker's office. DeLay absorbed it, and then the man widely called "the Hammer" on Capitol Hill (though rarely to his face) did what he does best: he hit back. "All right," DeLay replied. "Let's go. Let's go fight." Less than three hours later, before a roomful of reporters, DeLay addressed a Texas grand jury's charge that he and two political associates conspired to funnel $155,000 in illegal corporate campaign contributions into Texas legislative races. He called it "one of the weakest, most baseless indictments in American history" and the prosecutor who brought the case "a partisan fanatic." That night, anxious to show he's not a recluse, he introduced Rudy Giuliani at a Friends of Israel banquet. DeLay even made an uncharacteristic round of the cable shows, hinting darkly on CNN that he would soon produce "very good evidence" that his nemesis, Travis County district attorney Ronnie Earle, had engaged in a conspiracy of his own--"with the Democratic leadership here in Washington."

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Combativeness has seen Tom DeLay through near-death experiences before, but on the Hill late last week, it was hard to miss the signs that his foot soldiers and allies had begun positioning themselves in anticipation of his demise. G.O.P. rules require that DeLay, 58, majority leader since 2003, relinquish his post while he fights the conspiracy charge, and speculation is rife that even if he is acquitted his days as one of the most powerful men in the House could be over. "You leave a job like this, there is no coming back," says a top Republican official who likes DeLay and thinks he will be cleared. "Politics abhors a vacuum more than anything else, and it's going to move past him too quickly."

Almost immediately, it did. A plan engineered by DeLay and Hastert to install complaisant Rules Committee chairman David Dreier as temporary majority leader was nixed by conservatives who dislike Dreier's moderate positions on stem-cell research and gay marriage. Instead the brain trust installed ambitious whip Roy Blunt, who will share some of the majority leader's duties with Dreier. The setup is so shaky that some House Republicans are pressing for the election of a new leadership team as early as January.

Meanwhile, lobbying shops that had traded on the access to DeLay were desperately dialing House aides to forge new relationships. Those not tied to DeLay were calling the same staff members to gloat. "There's millions of dollars on the table," said an aide who had heard from both camps. "These guys are going to slaughter each other." What's left of the G.O.P. leadership, already beset by a raft of other political problems, was trying to figure out how to salvage the ambitious legislative agenda of more tax cuts, hurricane help and gas-price relief that they want to carry them to next year's midterm elections--a more difficult challenge with the sidelining of the man who had so determinedly pulled off many of their close victories.