Uncle Tom’s Comeback: Ken Blackwell, Tom DeLay form Coalition of Crazy

Uncle Tom Blackwell, the former Ohio Secretary of State, right-wing nut-job, and the man to call when you need an election rigged, is making a political comeback after being trounced in the 2006 gubernatorial race by Ted Strickland. He’s found a maybe-not-so-unlikely ally in former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is still under indictment in Texas for laundering campaign donations. Together, the pair has formed the Coalition for a Conservative Majority (CCM for short), a supposed grass-roots Republican organization. Exactly who else belongs to the group or what the group actually does is anyone’s guess. But if Blackwell and DeLay are behind it, you can bet it involves sinister laughter, gay people burning in eternal hell-fire, and, ummm, Blackwell and DeLay laughing sinisterly while gay people burn in eternal hell-fire? The two men talk strategy in this recent clip from Hardball with Chris Matthews. Notice that, while DeLay describes the group as being “outside of the beltway,” he happens to be standing in front of a backdrop of the Capitol dome in Washington, D.C. — Jared Klaus

This article appears in Nov 14-20, 2007.