Tom DeLay targets US liberals in media war

Philip Sherwell in New York
The Telegraph

For a decade, Tom DeLay ruthlessly enforced Republican rule in Washington with such vigour that he was nicknamed "The Hammer".

But the party's former leader in the House of Representatives will this month launch a national grassroots movement to combat the liberal activists who he believes outfoxed and outmanoeuvred Republicans to win the 2006 mid-term elections.

Mr DeLay, who revelled in his reputation as a no-holds-barred Washington operator as the party's chief whip and then majority leader from 1995 to 2005, aims to instil an army of conservatives across the country with his political street-fighting skills.

Funded by undisclosed Right-wing backers and inspired by the successful tactics of his liberal foes, thousands of recruits to the Coalition for a Conservative Majority (CCM) will be trained and mobilised to wage political war in meetings, online and in the media.

In one tactic borrowed straight from the opposition playbook, CCM volunteers will be issued with video cameras to pursue Democratic politicians in the hope of capturing a so-called 'YouTube' moment if they say or do something embarrassing or contradictory.

"In my business and political life, I have always believed you should study and learn from the enemy," Mr DeLay, 60, told The Sunday Telegraph on the eve of a trip to Britain to take part in an Oxford Union debate on Thursday about the US presidential elections.

(Continued here.)