Texas Vernacular: Yeah, That’s the Ticket

Now yesterday, when I wrote about Tom DeLay’s own recorded voice being used to prove that he knew, before the fact, that a crime was about to be committed by his underlings, a crime involving the laundering of $190,000 of corporate PAC money, I hadn’t really heard the audio tape, nor had I seen a transcription of it.

Until today.

And until today I haven’t heard an explanation from Tom DeLay how he “may have misspoke.” But now we know.

First what were his exact words that gave Assistant DA Greg Cox the “mistaken” impression that Tom DeLay knew about the transaction before it took place. Here it is:

DeLay: “Jim Ellis told me he was going to do it.”

Cox: “Before he did it?”

DeLay: “Uh-huh. By the way, it's a very common practice by both Democrats and Republicans. Best I know, remember, is that it was $190,000 from TRMPAC and he (Ellis) was going to get an X amount of money out of the RNC to give to state candidates, hard dollars.”

And that sounds like nails being driven into a coffin if you ask me, but Tom DeLay has an explanation that he revealed to reporters:

“The way I like to put it is Texas vernacular.”

Texas vernacular.

So what he is saying is that because Texans talk a little funny and have their own way of expressing themselves, what he was saying in the above recorded statement is not that he heard about the illegal transaction before it took place, but he actually heard about it after it took place.

So it’s like when you hear a Texan say that he would “like to die.” He really doesn’t like to die, in fact it is the opposite. As in the sentence “When he fell in that mudhole I like to die laughin’” (And the proper pronunciation is “lahk ta dah”).

So when Tom DeLay said “Uh-huh,” normally a Texas vernacular for “affirmative” he really meant “Nuh-uh.”

So that’s it. Everyone misunderstood Tom because he’s a Texan and talks in the Texas vernacular and you can’t find fault in that.

But like the proverbial gnat in a hail storm, his fate may just have been sealed. Tom DeLay’s explanation is just a little too whomperjawed for people to take as a serious explanation.