WASHINGTON, June 8 — Representative Tom DeLay personifies the word “unapologetic.”

Leaving Congress on Friday under indictment in Texas and under a cloud in Washington for his relationships with a lobbyist and two former senior aides who have pleaded guilty to felony corruption, Mr. DeLay, the combative former Republican majority leader, was not about to distance himself from himself.

“I did a good job,” said Mr. DeLay, the linchpin of the House Republican majority for the last decade and the mastermind of a formidable political operation that melded legislating, fund-raising, conservatism and business advocacy as never before. “I helped build the largest political coalition in the last 50 years. The K Street project and the K Street strategy I am very proud of.”

To the Republicans he kept in power in defiance of the odds and a torrent of criticism, Mr. DeLay was a brilliant tactician, one they rewarded with standing ovations on Thursday as he took the floor one last time to deliver an ode to the bare-knuckles partisanship that has been his trademark.

“He’s been a real leader,” said Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, the man who replaced Mr. DeLay as majority leader.

To Mr. DeLay’s critics, who include Democrats and some Republicans, the day should have come sooner. They say Mr. DeLay represents, and is responsible for, much that is wrong with the current Congress. Detractors say that in alliance with Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the man he handpicked for the top post in 1998, Mr. DeLay trampled legislative traditions in the House and fostered an environment of loose ethical standards that resulted in the growing corruption scandals on Capitol Hill.

“He corroded the safeguards of the institution against corruption and put in place a culture where you could trade legislative favors for campaign contributions,” said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California. “Hopefully, his passing means the institution may have some chance to recover.”

Appropriately enough, Democrats and Republicans bickered one last time on Thursday over Mr. DeLay.

Democrats resisted a Republican plan to allow him to deliver his valedictory from the House floor. But Mr. DeLay crossed them up by submitting his resignation from the Appropriations Committee on the floor, providing an opening for his speech celebrating political discord.

“You show me a nation without partisanship, and I’ll show you a tyranny,” Mr. DeLay said, adding, “It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle.”

Republicans crowded the chamber and applauded. But many Democrats, who listened at first, exited noisily to show their displeasure, though a few dozen stayed. “Bitter to the bitter end,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel, Democrat of Illinois, who heard out Mr. DeLay.

Assessing the strong response he stirs among those who he said have a “deep, deep hate” for him, Mr. DeLay said the opposition never got over being ousted from power back in 1994.

“The Democrats pine for those good old days, those days when the Republicans were in a minority mindset and didn’t fight for anything,” Mr. DeLay said in an interview. “They didn’t stand up for what they believed in and just took it and took it and took it.”

Mr. DeLay, elected to Congress from the Houston suburbs in 1984, was among those Republicans who decided they were not going to take it anymore. Along with Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Mr. Boehner and others, he was part of the inner circle that engineered the Republican victories that led to their taking control of the House after the 1994 elections.

As the ambitious majority whip, the No. 3 post in the House hierarchy, he immediately set out to forge a new bond with lobbyists, pressing for donors to give exclusively to Republicans and demanding that top trade associations and firms hire Republicans — an approach that drew him his first warning from the ethics committee.

Mr. DeLay hardly slowed down as former aides and allies, including the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, set up shop, establishing a network that could spring into action to push causes favored by the Republican leadership as well as their own clients.

“Things here don’t just happen because somebody wishes it is going to happen,” said Mr. DeLay, explaining his approach. “It takes a lot of work, a lot of people; you have to convince the country.”

Democrats and watchdog groups say Mr. DeLay linked political and policy support too closely as he raised money to bankroll Republican candidates and his other sophisticated initiatives like redistricting drives.

“DeLay’s legacy is one of turning the relationship between the private sector and the public sector into a pay-to-play environment,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat.

Assuming the majority leader’s post in 2003, Mr. DeLay gained power and also new scrutiny. He was slapped twice more by the ethics committee in 2004 for his fund-raising tactics and for pressuring a colleague. Then, as Mr. Abramoff became the focus of a federal corruption investigation, Mr. DeLay was indicted in September 2005 in state court in Texas on charges of violating campaign-finance laws.

As Mr. Abramoff joined DeLay aides earlier this year in pleading guilty to a variety of charges, Mr. DeLay stepped down as leader, and eventually decided to retire altogether.

He and other Republicans say the charges in Texas are politically motivated, and Mr. DeLay has denied wrongdoing in all of the cases surrounding him. He said in his speech on Thursday that he had conducted himself “at all times honorably and honestly.”

Once he was out of the leadership, he said, he came to the conclusion that he could best pursue his conservative causes outside Congress, unshackled from the rules and restraints of public office. His plans seem unformed but will include speaking, traveling and tormenting Democrats.

“I would imagine that I would be their worst nightmare,” he said.