Hammer Time?

You know how sometimes when you keep picking at a scab it opens up, starts bleeding again, and can become infected? And how afterwards you wished you had just left well enough alone?

Well, the Democrats just cannot let their isolated victories be:

A source close to [ex-Congressman Tom DeLay] tells Time that DeLay is planning an aggressive campaign to retake the House seat he quit in June if an appeals court lets stand a ruling by a federal judge last week that his name must stay on November's ballot—even though he has moved to Virginia.

"If it isn't overturned, Katy bar the door!" says a G.O.P. official. "Guess he'll have to fire up the engines on the campaign and let 'er rip."

The Democrats sued in Texas to keep DeLay's name on the ballot, presumably as part of their House caucus' long-since defunct "culture of corruption" meme, believing that would be a detriment to whomever the GOP managed to put up against former Representative Nick Lampson, one of the victims of DeLay's successful (and recently SCOTUS-upheld) 2002 Texas redistricting. But all it seems to have done is light another fire under the former House Majority Leader and stoke his thirst for revenge against the "opponents" who smeared him out of Congress. Now they may not only not pick up his old House seat, but see him return to the House majority caucus, vindicated and triumphant.

The Dems had everything they wanted; Tom DeLay was out of the House GOP leadership and then out of Congress altogether. But they had to keep pick, pick, picking. And now their "scab" is poised to become an abcess they'll never get rid of.

[h/t: CQ]