DeLay organizes Coalition for a Conservative Majority

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.

...

His target is to combat a well-organised coalition of liberal pressure groups led by moveon.org, whose backers include billionaire financier George Soros.

This so-called 'Netroots' movement was quick to recognise the power of the Internet for politics.

In one notable incident, George Allen, a sitting Republican senator heading for re-election, was caught by an opposition activist with a video camera allegedly using an obscure racial epithet. The footage was posted online, Mr Allen lost by a wafer-thin margin and the Democrats captured the Senate with a single-seat majority.

It is not the first time that Mr DeLay has tried to re-shape the political landscape. As well as enforcing party discipline on Capitol Hill, he was also one of the forces behind the highly successful 'K Street Project' to place Republicans in senior positions in the powerful lobbying industry (which is traditionally located around that Washington address).

He is looking forward to the new battle. "We need to get in there and mix it up with them," he said.

"That's what I'm all about."

DeLay is not optimistic about GOP prospects in 2008. I think he is looking at the current polls and not at the circumstances that will be in place a year from now. The Democrats have badly blown it on the Iraq war and they appear clueless on Iran. When the public comes to understand these facts there should be ample reason to reject the Democrat looser caucus and its Presidential candidate.