The man who made Ted Cruz possible: How Tom DeLay set the stage for this generation’s most-hated lawmaker

2016 is a political season of epic peculiarity and weirdness, so perhaps it's not too surprising that the news of a former speaker of the House being convicted of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money to a former student he molested when he was a wrestling coach years before is part of the mix. It's a testament to how far we've defined deviancy down that this has only caused a minor ripple in the press. He's an elderly man now and he has been out of office for a decade