Now these four little letters are absolutely guaranteed to raise the Bush administration’s collective blood pressure as it tries to get an energy bill through Congress. But the MTBE threat the administration is most concerned with isn’t environmental; it’s political. Once before, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s dogged determination to protect MTBE producers from legal jeopardy dragged the administration’s entire energy plan down to defeat. And he’s at it again.

A lot has changed since late 2003, the last time the Bush energy bill failed to make it through Congress. Gas prices have hit new highs — prices have soared 80 percent since Bush first introduced his energy plan — and the president’s approval ratings have slid to new lows. A Gallup Poll earlier this month found that more Americans think the federal government needs to act immediately to lower gas prices (44 percent) than move on Social Security (37 percent), the president’s top priority. No wonder the president feels a new urgency on energy legislation: “I wish I could simply wave a magic wand and lower gas prices tomorrow,” Bush said on Wednesday.

The political sands may be shifting for Bush, but the one Washington constant is still Tom DeLay. For all the charges he’s faced, DeLay has never been accused of a lack of consistency. Last week, he managed to add the same lawsuit-immunity provision to the House energy bill that torpedoed the energy bill’s Senate chances last time around. And Tuesday night, he rebuffed the final frantic Democratic efforts to separate the measure from the main energy legislation, expected to pass the House as soon as Thursday.

But while DeLay’s allegiance to MTBE producers may not have changed, the atmosphere around him has been undeniably transformed in recent months — even Republicans on the House Ethics Committee now say they are ready for an investigation. DeLay’s hardly the only big-time Republican to back MTBE liability immunity — House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Joe Barton, who’s received around $750,000 from energy interests over the past decade, has also been a strong proponent of the measure — but since last week’s power play, the majority leader has become the public face of MTBE legal immunity, to the delight of Democrats and environmental groups.

Now that every move of the man from Sugar Land comes under a white-hot media spotlight, reporters have predictably spent the past few days scrutinizing the congressman’s tangle of ties to oil companies and others who’d be spared legal jeopardy thanks to the provision. (“DeLay at Center of the Energy Debate” read one recent AP headline.) The energy bill’s foes are scrambling to take advantage of the new reality around the majority leader. It’s an association that pains the White House, but “to the public, this is becoming Tom DeLay’s bill,” admits a grim GOP congressional staffer.

“Last time, we were out front in identifying MTBE very aggressively as DeLay’s measure. And we had some success,” says Environmental Working Group Action Fund president Ken Cook. “The difference now is, the rest of the context is filled in: his junkets, the other corruption allegations.” He adds, “There’s kind of an odor around him this time, a willingness to believe things about Mr. DeLay and the lengths to which he’s willing to go that is much stronger than was there before.”

Democrats on the Hill predict the majority leader’s woes may take a toll on the measure’s long-term prospects. “He’s still powerful, but people may not be as willing to take the hit for him the way they were two years ago,” says a Democratic House committee staffer familiar with the legislation. “We’re not talking fringe groups bringing these lawsuits here; we’re talking the state of New Hampshire. Now people have to think: ‘Am I willing to overlook a case by my school board, by the local water supplier, for Tom DeLay?’ Some members still are, but it’s becoming a harder sell.”

And whether the DeLay controversy will further damage the bill’s chances in the Senate, where the MTBE measure sank the bill last time, remains a very real question. Several Northeast Republicans, particularly New England senators such as John Sununu and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire (where MTBE was an issue during last year’s presidential primary) have already signaled their unwillingness to support any measure that includes MTBE liability protection when the Senate takes up the measure next month. And Senate Energy Committee chairman Pete Domenici has made it clear the House will have to find a compromise on the issue, or the bill won’t survive.

Of course, MTBE and Tom DeLay are hardly the only issues dogging the president’s energy legislation. A provision inserted into the bill’s “miscellaneous” section could mean the most drastic Clean Air Act changes since his father’s administration. The measure, a favorite of groups like the National Association of Manufacturers, would free states from Clean Air Act requirements if some of their pollution comes from other heavily polluted areas located “upwind” until those areas had cleaned up their act. Outraged Democrats point out that nearly every state is “downwind” from somewhere else, and say this amounts to a repeal of federal air pollution requirements.

Meanwhile, the measure’s growing tally of tax breaks for energy producers — introduced at a time of sky-high oil prices — is drawing scrutiny from press and politicians both. A new report by Taxpayers for Common Sense, one of several fiscal watchdog groups to announce their opposition to the energy bill this week, found the measure’s cost this session had mushroomed by $35 billion in the three weeks since it was introduced, to the tune of a staggering $88.9 billion in tax breaks and industry subsidies over the next decade.

So the options for the GOP right now range from tough to tougher. Despite its lack of short-term solutions, the Bush energy bill is the Republican Party’s sole proffered fix for high gas prices and other energy woes — the political consequences of failing to pass it are unthinkable. But so is the impact, given the current climate, of creating legal immunity for an industry with a growing constituency of critics, using a provision now surrounded with an aura of corruption, or at least the perception of corruption.

Call it the mainstreaming of MTBE bashing: According to the most recent tallies, more than 20 million people in 112 congressional districts have been affected by MTBE-polluted drinking water — the count of communities affected has risen by by more than 20 percent over the past two years — and in 26 of those districts, municipalities have taken to the courts to force oil companies to fix the problem. More suits are on the way — representing a lot of potentially angry voters.

The White House faces its own set of unappetizing options. Passing the energy bill remains priority No. 1 in the face of growing public pressure. But now the administration faces the very real prospect that a win on the energy bill could indirectly taint them with fallout from the DeLay mess.

What explains the Hammer’s die-hard loyalty to liability immunity for MTBE? He’s long stood up for the chemical industry out of conservative principle, and most MTBE manufacturers are Texas-based. But DeLay’s detractors point to another motive closer to the bottom line: A recent Public Citizen tally of five years of contributions to DeLay’s legal defense fund found that $107,000 came from energy and natural resources companies. His political action committee has been the recipient of even greater industry largesse; according to the Center for Responsive Politics, oil and gas companies, many of whom stand to benefit from the MTBE immunity provision, have donated more than $300,000 over the last three election cycles.

Last year, DeLay drew a rebuke from the Ethics Committee because he “at a minimum, created the appearance that donors were being provided with special access … regarding the then-pending energy legislation.” But it appears the congressman, never one to put much stock in appearances, hasn’t yet taken that message to heart. Huntsman Corp., one of the nation’s largest MTBE producers, has demonstrated a surge in DeLay-directed generosity over the past few months. Jon M. Huntsman Sr., Huntsman Corp., the Huntsman PAC and company CEO Peter Huntsman all gave the maximum contribution to the DeLay’s legal defense fund in the last quarter of 2004; the $20,000 total put them in the top tier of his supporters. (And Huntsman’s loyalty to DeLay doesn’t stop there: Last January, the company hired the congressman’s former deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, along with two of his colleagues from the Washington firm Alexander Strategies, to round out their formidable energy bill lobbying team.)

Besides protecting companies from the spate of MTBE-related lawsuits filed since late 2003, the House bill calls for phasing out the additive’s use over a nine-year stretch. The increasingly handout-loaded bill would also give MTBE producers a $2 billion golden parachute to help with industry transition costs. Democrats are urging a faster phaseout plan that would end the additive’s use by the end of the decade, and they are criticizing the GOP’s generosity. “These [Republican] provisions represent a direct assault on the nation’s safe drinking-water supply,” a frustrated John Dingell, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told reporters. “MTBE producers have known for years that MTBE was a problem. They should not be asking the taxpayers to now pay for cleanup or for [a] corporate handout.”

The GOP is clearly nervous about how the measure will play outside the Beltway. Anticipating the energy bill’s House passage this week, Republican leadership launched a communications strategy on Tuesday designed to boost public support for the measure despite the lack of an immediate impact at the pump — and to try to shift attention from the swarm of ethical questions surrounding Tom DeLay. The working idea, borrowed from the Bush administration, is to circumvent the national media, with its fixation on DeLay’s corporate connections, in favor of local outlets. Republican representatives planned to blanket local airwaves using messages specifically developed for their region. (For instance: The winter-weary, blackout-wary Northeast is set to hear about home-heating cost assistance and an overhaul of the national power grid.)

Meanwhile, the White House’s massive push for the energy plan has moved into high gear. The president devoted his radio address last Saturday to pressing the point, and he followed up a recent Hill lobbying visit by Energy Secretary Sam Bodman with scheduled meetings of his own yesterday with the chairmen of the House and Senate committees dealing with the bill. In a speech on Wednesday, he repeated his call for speedy passage. So far, the administration has kept largely mum on its views of both the MTBE provision and Tom DeLay’s recent actions. As history draws closer to repeating itself, that may change, though success is far from certain; last time, White House calls for an MTBE compromise drew a public rebuff from the majority leader. (“We see no need for a giveaway to trial lawyers,” sneered a DeLay spokesman shortly before the energy bill went down in flames.)

“I think if it comes down to having an energy bill or MTBE, the White House will speak out,” says an organizer for a major environmental group actively opposing the legislation. “So the question is, does the cloud surrounding him, combined with the substance of this provision, cause Bush to speak out? The clearer it becomes that you can’t have this liability shield and the bill both — the question then is, not will the administration speak out publicly, but are they ready to pull out all the stops?”

Privately, even some GOP representatives who publicly support the measure have begun telling environmental lobbyists to keep the spotlight on Tom DeLay and what they view as the bill’s flaws, particularly the MTBE provision. “What’s ironic is, the White House has almost everything it wants in this bill, including ANWR. They did their best to strip it down to its bare essence, to ensure passage. Now this comes up,” says Cook, of the Environmental Working Group Action Fund. “But Tom DeLay doesn’t answer to anyone but himself.”

McHenry has been one of the most completely shameless of House Republicans since his arrival in Congress, in 2005, when he immediately and publicly endorsed Tom DeLay’s brilliant plan to exempt himself from ethics rules as his connections to Jack Abramoff began to end his career. But he was born to be cheerfully corrupt: He’s a product of the College Republicans, an organization that trains little Lee Atwaters, Karl Roves and Grover Norquists in the arts of scorched-earth campaigning and wholly irresponsible “governing” on behalf of the monied interests that bought you your job. The ethos is win by any means necessary, legal or quasi-legal (or worse, as long as you never get caught), and McHenry was very good at that, according to Benjamin Wallace-Wells’ memorable profile of the then-freshman in the Washington Monthly.

After the College Republicans, and a failed state legislature race, McHenry moved on to truly insidious conservative astroturfing/push-polling/communications firm DCI, then worked for Rove, then took a political appointment in the Bush administration, then moved to the district he now represents, where he started a real estate company that did not actually buy or sell any real estate, so that he could run for Congress as “a small businessman.”

Once in the United States House of Representatives, McHenry personally intervened in a wild and bloody College Republican National Committee chair election, on behalf of a personal friend of his who’d become slightly toxic after he sent fundraising letters attempting to trick “elderly people with dementia” into donating to the CRNC. And he was successful! The horrible kid won, against all odds:

In other phone calls, McHenry was more blunt: “He told me, and several of my friends that we were done in politics if we didn’t support him,” another College Republican chapter president told me. (McHenry has admitted that he and Deans made the calls but denied that they threatened anyone’s career). Over the course of two weeks, after a couple of a dozen calls, McHenry prevailed upon those in the North Carolina delegation to change their votes, removing three votes from Davidson’s column and putting them in Gourley’s. Gourley ended up winning by six votes; had North Carolina voted the other way, Davidson might have won.

Another of McHenry’s first acts in Congress, Wallace-Wells writes, was to champion a bill that was specifically written to rip off a large portion of his constituents, by making it “much harder for government to regulate or block the conversion of credit unions into banks …” He is a close ally of major consumer financial institutions with a plum assignment to the Committee on Financial Services, which is great for raising money.

It’s only natural that Elizabeth Warren, whose mission is to protect consumers from unethical and predatory practices by these institutions, is Patrick McHenry’s enemy. You can complain on his Facebook wall all you like, but the Republican from North Carolina is incapable of feeling embarrassment.

And his treatment of Warren will only make him a bigger conservative hero and an even more attractive investment opportunity for major banks.

The charges arose after DeLay set up a PAC to funnel corporate money, which is barred in Texas elections, to candidates for the state legislature. The group raised $190,000 and funneled it through the national Republican Party, which then distributed the money to several state-level candidates in Texas.

To learn more about the case that brought DeLay down, I spoke with Lou Dubose, who co-authored “The Hammer,” a biography of DeLay. The former editor of the Texas Observer and the current editor of the Washington Spectator newsletter, Dubose covered the trial gavel to gavel in Austin. He was in the courtroom on Monday when DeLay gave a lengthy presentencing speech accusing prosecutors of having political motivations and claiming he had $10 million in legal bills. 

I asked Dubose whether DeLay, who is planning an appeal, will ever see the inside of a jail cell, and whether the former majority leader appears humbled by the ordeal of the trial.  The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Did you ever think that you would see this happen?

I really didn’t. This was a working class jury, and I think that made a huge difference.

What was the dynamic with the jury — why did that make a difference?

Gary Cobb, the assistant DA who tried the case, really dragged out the $50,000 checks and the flights on corporate jets with the same persons who had written the checks to DeLay’s PAC. The sort of life that Tom DeLay lived at the expense of the corporate lobby — I think that really made an impact. By their clothes and what we know about them, it was a real working-class jury.

Oddly enough, Tom DeLay spent the entire duration of the three-week trial in a motor home rather than the Four Seasons. He drove his motor coach over here and checked into a motor home park in south Austin, a long way from where he was playing golf at Saint Andrews in Scotland. Then there was also the fact of the way the DeLays dressed, the fact that Reverend Rick Scarborough was sitting behind them. There was a lot of bling there that these people on the jury didn’t have.

Was it possible to tell where the $190,000 ended up? Did it just go to the state GOP?

The money came back, and it went to the candidates in Texas for whom it was designated. The backstory, of course, is that the Republicans controlled everything in Texas but the statehouse. Therefore they could not control redistricting. So DeLay set this organization up in 2001 for the 2002 election and they had to win a majority in the house. They moved this $190,000 up to D.C. because they were specifically raising corporate money, which was easier to raise. They sent it to Washington with specific instructions to send it back to these designated candidates. The candidates got the checks in the exact amount of $190,000.

And DeLay personally raised the money?

Well, that was the question. He stayed in the background but the state proved that he was aware that that transaction had happened. He was probably involved in directing it, although they didn’t have direct testimony on that. They put the three men who did the money-laundering in a room together in Sugar Land, Texas, in DeLay’s district, before the transaction was made.

Remarkably, at one point in the trial, DeLay went out and talked to Laylan Copelin of the Austin American-Statesman, who is a really terrific reporter. And Laylan asked him if he could have stopped the transaction. And DeLay said, “I could have stopped it, but why would I?”

And that was used in the trial?

In the middle of the trial, the state called Laylan Copelin as a witness — really bizarre. He’d been sitting there most of the trial; two weeks into the trial they call him as a witness because of what DeLay had said. His story ran, and two days later he was on the stand testifying as to what he had been told.

So I think DeLay proved to be a terrible client for a storied criminal defense attorney, Dick DeGuerin. That said, the state did an incredible job putting on a case that had to be by nature largely circumstantial.

Do you think he will ever spend a day in jail?

No. Simply because the Court of Criminal Appeals is an elected court, it’s all Republican, it’s highly political. It’s known as a prosecutors’ court, but in this case I would bet that they’re going to rule for the defendant. The Third Court of Appeals, where the appeal will start, is also a Republican court.

What are the issues in the appeal?

These courts are going to have to find a creative way of setting Tom DeLay free. One argument that they once made that they might try to revive is that money-laundering didn’t apply to checks, it applied to cash. This involved checks. The problem with that at the appellate level is that there have been a number of convictions based on money laundering with checks. So are you going to overturn all these prior convictions in order to save Tom DeLay?

What is DeLay doing these days?

You know, nothing. He is struggling to remain relevant. DeLay was always the star at CPAC, the annual conservative conference in Washington. But he hasn’t been allowed to speak there. Two years ago at CPAC, he was trolling for interviews. At the last CPAC convention, he was shunned.

He’s become a pariah to the Republican Party, and I don’t quite understand why. The true believers hold him responsible, rightly, for the Bush Medicare prescription drug bill, which DeLay pushed through. But he’s of no use to them anymore, and he’s not wanted. So most of what he does is struggle to remain relevant, and he’s not. Dick DeGuerin, in his closing argument, said “This prosecution has rendered my client unemployable.” And to my knowledge, he’s not employed.

His media statements have been defiant, but has he changed?

I don’t think so. That’s what’s remarkable. This is the same Tom DeLay that I saw every day for a year and a half when I followed him in Washington. It seemed to me that it never occurred to him that he no longer had the power that he once exercised. He had no regrets — he’s the same guy, except that he’s driving in a motor home instead of sleeping in the Four Seasons.

“This is an abuse of power. It’s a miscarriage of justice, and I still maintain that I am innocent. The criminalization of politics undermines our very system and I’m very disappointed in the outcome,” DeLay told reporters outside the courtroom. He remains free on bond, and his sentencing was tentatively set to begin on Dec. 20.

Prosecutors said DeLay, who once held the No. 2 job in the House of Representatives and whose heavy-handed style earned him the nickname “the Hammer,” used his political action committee to illegally channel $190,000 in corporate donations into 2002 Texas legislative races through a money swap.

DeLay and his attorneys maintained the former Houston-area congressman did nothing wrong as no corporate funds went to Texas candidates and the money swap was legal.

The verdict came after a three-week trial in which prosecutors presented more than 30 witnesses and volumes of e-mails and other documents. DeLay’s attorneys presented five witnesses.

Prosecutors said DeLay conspired with two associates, John Colyandro and Jim Ellis, to use his Texas-based PAC to send $190,000 in corporate money to an arm of the Washington-based Republican National Committee, or RNC. The RNC then sent the same amount to seven Texas House candidates. Under Texas law, corporate money can’t go directly to political campaigns.

Prosecutors claim the money helped Republicans take control of the Texas House. That enabled the GOP majority to push through a Delay-engineered congressional redistricting plan that sent more Texas Republicans to Congress in 2004 — and strengthened DeLay’s political power.

DeLay’s attorneys argued the money swap resulted in the seven candidates getting donations from individuals, which they could legally use in Texas.

They also said DeLay only lent his name to the PAC and had little involvement in how it was run. Prosecutors, who presented mostly circumstantial evidence, didn’t prove he committed a crime, they said.

DeLay has chosen to have Senior Judge Pat Priest sentence him. He faces five years to life in prison on the money laundering charge and two to 20 years on the conspiracy charge. He also would be eligible for probation.

The 2005 criminal charges in Texas, as well as a separate federal investigation of DeLay’s ties to disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, ended his 22-year political career representing suburban Houston. The Justice Department probe into DeLay’s ties to Abramoff ended without any charges filed against DeLay.

Ellis and Colyandro, who face lesser charges, will be tried later.

Except for a 2009 appearance on ABC’s hit television show “Dancing With the Stars,” DeLay has been out of the spotlight since resigning from Congress in 2006. He now runs a consulting firm based in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land.