A lively, hard-hitting biography of the pro-business, pro-Jesus, anti-government, anti-environment House majority leader who is driving today's Congressional agenda. Tom DeLay didn't look like he was going to amount to much. He started his professional career as owner of a pest control business. His colleagues in the Texas Legislature thought him unremarkable, if good fun at a party; they called him "Hot Tub Tom." Today, Tom DeLay is arguably the most powerful man in Congress; one who has helped to undermine age-old procedural traditions and to turn the House into a single-party operation-all without the backing of Karl Rove or George W. Bush. How did he get from there to here? In The Hammer Lou Dubose and Jan Reid track DeLay's rise to the pinnacle of power, illuminating not only his personality and policies but the forces in American politics which have made him a player. Long know n for his inflammatory oratory-he dubbed the Environmental Protection Agency 'the Gestapo of Government,' and said he hadn't served in Vietnam because too many minorities had signed up leaving no room for people like him-DeLay's real power resides in his mastery of the loopholes and evasions of campaign finance law and of Byzantine congressional procedure, as well as his deep ties to the evangelical Christian right. This first book-length examination of DeLay, based on the authors' long-term acquaintance with him from his early days in the Texas Legislature and recent original reporting, illuminates not only who DeLay is and what he wants, but why Americans should be plenty concerned about it.
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