The WaPo has a nice overview of how Tom DeLay has gotten to be so powerful - in a word, money and the ability to raise oodles of it. I'll say this for the guy - he's the best example of the futility of campiagn finance reform you'll ever find. Until and unless we require all campaigns to be publicly funded, I doubt there will ever be a law that DeLay can't work around. Read it and weep. (Thanks to Alfredo Garcia for the tip.)