Demagogue

especially one of those heavy, wooden doors on the Capitol.

The World's Biggest(TM) Asshole's reign is officially over.

From the House floor/stage Tom DeLay shared his own first guiding principle -- the Principle of Political Douchebaggery.

"It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle," DeLay said, adding that true statesmen "are not defined by what they compromise, but by what they don't."

Shorter DeLay: compromise is for pussies.

He even managed to say something interesting that I do sort of agree with-- not the first sentence, but the second.

"The common lament over the recent rise in political partisanship is often nothing more than a veiled complaint instead about the recent rise of political conservatism," he said. "You show me a nation without partisanship, and I'll show you a tyranny."

The fact that there is open and free debate *is* a good thing. Except in the case of right-wingers many of them try to to shut-down and shut-up their opposition with labels like traitor, anti-American, unpatriotic and the like. (Look no further than Ann Coulter.) I think many of us fear that in their heart-of-hearts, if they could do whatever they wanted without fear of political repurcussions, that they could rationalize a lot of very tyrannical actions against "godless liberals" in the name of "protecting" society from evil.

So, what did the Dems do while DeLay eulogized his political career?

Some 70 House Democrats sat politely through the beginning of the speech. But about 20 of them stood up and began filing out of the chamber when DeLay launched into a critique of liberalism as a philosophy seeking "more government, more taxation, more control over people's lives and decisions and wallets."

It must be awfully difficult to find a hat when your head is shaped like a giant penis.