Travis County's 'Earle' of Hypocrisy

If Ronnie Earle, the anti-corporate contributions zealot D.A. of Travis County, Texas, thought Tom DeLay was going to throw in the towel, he found out differently Thursday. DeLay provided evidence to the Washington Times that Earle himself has received corporate and union campaign donations, which under Texas law are illegal.

Oops!

This comes on top of revelations that Earle went jury shopping to find a group that would do his bidding on indicting DeLay, that Earle has given two filmmakers extraordinary access to legal proceedings so that they could film a movie scripted on the basis that he take Tom DeLay down, and that the foreman of the grand jury that initially voted for the indictment is a close buddy of a failed Democratic congressional candidate.

As we've said before, it's petty, it's partisan and it's purely political. The thrust of Earle's indictments is that DeLay "laundered" corporate funds into Texas congressional campaigns. What DeLay did was send corporate contributions sent to his political action committee to the Republican National State Elections Committee. This is legal, and both parties do it. The RNSEC contributes money to local Republican candidates in various states, including Texas. It did so in several congressional races.

Earle says this is money laundering. Actually, he says it's money laundering when Tom DeLay does it. He hasn't sought indictments against any Democrats, but then those are his friends and he did make a public promise before a group of Democrats that he would "bring DeLay down." A promise is a promise, right?

Ask yourself this question: If DeLay had not sent any money at all to the RNSEC, do you think it would have contributed any money to Texas congressional candidates? Of course it would have.

Second question: Does anyone seriously believe that no corporate money from the 49 other states sent to the RNSEC helped fund its contributions in Texas? That's not how it works. For Ronnie Earle to be true to his rhetoric, he needs to indict the lead donor of every corporate contribution to every Democratic and Republican national campaign committees.

That would pit Ronnie Earle against the rest of the American political world. As big a joke as he is, even Ronnie Earle knows better than to seek that fight.