Raw video: Exclusive interview with Tom DeLay | Len Cannon's 11 News report

Tom DeLay likes to refer to his book “No Retreat, No Surrender: One American’s Fight” as “history as I lived it.”

Much of that history – even that of his personal life – is at times ugly, mean and downright sobering.

In an exclusive one-on-one interview Tuesday, the former U.S. House Majority Leader turned whipping boy for Democrats and now self-proclaimed voice for the conservative cause didn’t back down from his criticism of even some of his closest allies in his biographic penning.

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Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay talks about his new book and life after Congress.

In the 188-page book DeLay, who for 20-plus years served as a Houston-area congressman, takes swipes at former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich as “ineffective” in that role and Texas Congressman Dick Armey as “blinded” by ambition.

DeLay does not spare the rod in his critique of President George W. Bush, who he considers “certainly no conservative in the classic sense.”

That is what he has to say about his friends. He also calls President Bill Clinton “slimy” and a golf cheat and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton as “dangerous,” but possibly the next president of the United States.

“I’m sure there are some people who don’t like my book because when the truth is out it is embarrassing (and) a lot of people don’t want the truth out," said Delay.” I think it is incredibly important for the conservative movement to understand who we are what we are trying to do and where we want to take the country… And you've got to lay it all out there.”

The reaction thus far to the book has been mixed, said DeLay, who will be at the First Colony Mall Barnes and Noble in Sugar Land at 7 p.m. to autograph copies of the book.

DeLay also does not spare himself from self-criticism.

‘Twenty years ago I was a self centered jerk,” said DeLay. “I almost lost my family. I almost destroyed my marriage.”

While the comments are not lurid, DeLay does reveal in some general detail of a time in his life when Representative DeLay was better known as “Hot Tub Tom.”

He acknowledged having affairs and drinking too much at night while pushing for conservative causes and maintaining the Republican ideal of family values during the day.

DeLay said too it was difficult to admit his “discretions” in print, even if he never really provides specifics.

“I drank too much. I slept with women I wasn’t married to. I neglected my family. This is the truth. And I recount it with a deep sense of grief that I ever lived in such a manner,” he writes in the book.

He referred to his laying out the personal failings as “part of my testimony.”

“It is a cleansing process, but it also embarrassing (and) soul searching,” said DeLay, who had to go to his wife of 39 years Christine and let her know that the book was not all behind the scene politics.

“I had to go to my wife and say we are going to lay it out in the book. She wasn’t real comfortable with that,” said DeLay.

It is also not likely President Bush is very comfortable with DeLay’s assertion that the fellow Texan isn’t “conservative.”

“He himself has called himself the compassionate conservative, he is not my ideal conservative, but it’s a matter of degrees,” said DeLay who differs from the president on education and immigration policies. He chastises Bush for “liberally” increasing government’s size to achieve the “compassionate conservative” goals.

The Sugar Land Republican though insisted that differences aside Bush is on the right course when it comes to fighting the war on terror.

His former House ally Newt Gingrich is also skewered a bit.

While noting the former speaker of the House as “an amazingly gifted man,” DeLay dubbed Gingrich as vain and “an ineffective speaker of the House.”

Not one to shy away from commenting on what ails the political process DeLay also takes the Republican leadership to task for failing to communicate to the conservative base during the 2006 election cycle and thus losing the Republican majority in Congress.

“I like to call it a wake up call, I think we got a little too arrogant, a little too complacent and the last election was a wake up call,” said DeLay.

And as scandal and “culture of corruption,” tag was placed on DeLay and other Republicans the GOP did little to fight back insisted DeLay.

“Our communication was really poor in fighting the other side,” said DeLay. “The other side had just as many corrupt people going to jail as the Republicans… The media focused on the Republicans and the Democrats’ strategy and the Republicans did nothing.”

Still, some of the scandal that surrounded Republicans during the 2006 campaign included an indictment on campaign fundraising related money laundering charges against DeLay and his ties to now jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff. DeLay said he doesn’t feel any responsibility for what role his problems may have played.

DeLay, who these days is running a start up political think tank and blogging via his www.tomdelay.com Website, is keeping a close eye on the 2008 presidential race.

He said he is “offended” by what he terms as the media picking the frontrunners seeking the Republican nomination. It’s clear that he is not much impressed with the current crop of those seeking the party’s nomination.

“We’re still waiting for a leader to emerge,” said DeLay.

Of the frontrunners Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, DeLay finds both candidates wanting.

He criticizes McCain for pushing through “the worst campaign finance law” and worried that too many Republicans are overlooking Giuliani’s “liberal” social views on abortion and gun control.

As for the Democrats?

Barack Obama is a “flash in the pan,” when compared to Hillary Clinton.

On Clinton though – who DeLay calls “very dangerous woman” – chances are good she could win the White House.

“She is very liberal trying now to be a moderate soccer mom,” said DeLay. “She has the most massive political organization I have ever seen supporting her and if the conservatives do not get together and not unite against her and the left I think Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States.”

As for DeLay, his days of seeking political office are done. He said he prefers to be on the sideline and to work for what he believes as a voice for the cause.

“I wish I had a Tom DeLay doing what I am doing now, when I was in office,” he said.