THIS looks like the end of the political career of Tom DeLay.

It may also mark the point when the Republican- controlled Congress begins to distance itself from President Bush.

If that happens, it will bring an emphatic end to Bush’s hopes for his second term, which have already suffered heavy blows.

In all the torrent of comment in the US about the criminal indictment of DeLay, the second most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives, there has been a pervasive note of uncertainty about how serious the charge would prove.

His legal troubles have been a long time brewing, but this has always been a storm that might either build to a climax or simply fade away. At the most technical level, it still is.

There is no dispute about the central facts. A Republican political committee in Texas, which DeLay had helped to organise to help Republicans to take over the state legislature in 2002, collected $190,000 in corporate donations. In September 2002, it transferred them to an arm of the Republican National Committee. The RNC then gave $190,000 to seven candidates running for the Texan House of Representatives.

The prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, alleges that this breaches a law in Texas (which 17 other states also have) against using corporate funds for state election purposes.

DeLay’s own reflexive retort — that Earle, a Democrat (and elected to his post) is an “unabashed partisan zealot” — is weak. Not only has Earle proved an energetic prosecutor of Democrats, but as Bill Clinton could tell DeLay, it is entirely possible for your opponents to be driven by partisan fury and for them still to catch you in the act.

But DeLay’s far stronger defence is that he had no personal knowledge of this transaction. Proving actual knowledge is hard, as all prosecutors know.

Some also question whether, even if DeLay were shown to have committed an offence, this would justify the heavy weaponry of criminal indictment. The Washington Post, no lover of DeLay, said yesterday in its editorial that the indictment “gives us pause”. It questioned whether, even if the manoeuvre were proven to be an evasion of state laws, it would be “one so blatantly illegal that it amounts to a criminal felony rather than a civil violation . . . the kind of clever money trade that election lawyers engineer all the time”.

But even if DeLay rebuts his prosecutor, his chances of returning to Capitol Hill must be slim. His troubles coincide with too many others besetting the party’s leaders on Capitol Hill. The White House itself is also facing a criminal investigation into whether anyone leaked the name of a CIA agent. Republicans used the charge of sleaze to great effect against Democrats in the 1992 and 1994 congressional elections. They may find it now turns to bite them.

Ethical issues apart, they also have to grapple with the criticism of President Bush over Hurricane Katrina, Iraq and soaring heating and petrol bills.Even six months ago, Bush’s plans for reforming the national pension scheme were struggling. The project, supposed to be the centrepiece of his second term, was hugely difficult and expensive. Iraq was sapping political support.

Hurricane Katrina and the allegations of incompetence and cronyism against his team were another blow.

Now Bush has lost his “enforcer” on Capitol Hill: the man who summoned up the Republican party’s religious, conservative base to drive Bush’s programme through Congress.

If DeLay’s exile from the position of Majority Leader is permanent, it is a real blow to Bush. It may also mark the moment when Republicans on Capitol Hill, a year away from mid-term elections, began to think that alliance with the President’s most ambitious plans might jeopardise their own future.

Times Recommends

• Heed the great stabiliser’s words
• How a voice for everyone led to stalemate
• Bakara market becomes a slaughterhouse