You need to read Robert Novak’s column about Tom DeLay’s memoir set to be released March 20, 2007, and make sure you are in a good mood when you read it. What Novak reveals about DeLay’s attacks against Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and President Bush would be comical if DeLay wasn’t such a pompous hypocrite.

WASHINGTON — Newt Gingrich’s attempted phoenix-like rise from his own political ashes to a presidential candidacy next week will run into a harsh assessment by his former House Republican colleague, Tom DeLay. The former majority leader’s memoir assails Gingrich as an “ineffective” House speaker with a flawed moral compass.

Gingrich is not the only erstwhile political ally to feel DeLay’s wrath. In “No Retreat, No Surrender: One American’s Fight,” DeLay is even more critical of his predecessor as majority leader, Dick Armey, and assails George W. Bush for being more compassionate than conservative. Even DeLay’s handpicked speaker succeeding Gingrich, J. Dennis Hastert, is accused along with Gingrich and Armey of opening the door to the Democratic purge of him.

DeLay refers to Armey as “so blinded by ambition as to be useless to the cause,” a “poor leader” who had “few fresh ideas.” He adds that Armey “resented anyone he thought might get in the way of his becoming speaker of the House. Beware the man drunk with ambition.” His version of the failed 1997 coup attempt against Gingrich pleads innocence and accuses Armey, after realizing he would not succeed Gingrich, of telling the speaker that DeLay was plotting against him: “He had lied to cover his ambitions, betraying both his movement and his fellow leaders.”

The memoir ends DeLay’s reticence in criticizing President Bush. Deriding Bush’s self-identification as “a compassionate conservative,” DeLay asserts “he has expanded government to suit his purpose, especially in the area of education. He may be compassionate, but he is certainly no conservative in the classic sense.” He also charges that Bush has failed to stress the role of the U.S. troops fighting in Iraq, adding, “typically . . . no one at the White House was listening” to his advice.

Tom DeLay may like to act like he is a bona fide voice for the conservative movement, and he may want to act like a whiny baby and blame everyone else in leadership for not being conservative enough and being corrupted with power, but everyone who knows anything about the House under DeLay’s majority leadership knows that he is full of it. This is the same man who claimed that there was “no fat left to cut in the federal budget,” and who strong-armed legislators into supporting the government-expanding Medicare Part D while holding the vote open in the wee hours of the morning.

Mr. DeLay, I’ll tell you what I told Mrs. Clinton (or is it Ms. Rodham?) in my earlier post: just sit down and shut up. We’re all tired of the bull.