Marble Composition

Biding Their Time?

I always like to keep an eye on what's going on in Congress. One thing I've learned is that if you have a fat elephant next to your party ID, especially if you're in the party leadership, you are someone's whore. And, there's almost always a corporate hand in the till. On that note:

Should Democrats wait a little while to start hammering Congressional Republicans over the head about the massive corruption taking place in Washington? Sam and Franklin address that here:

GET SHRILL. Franklin Foer is spot-on in his analysis of congressional Republicans’ Jack Abramoff problem and in his call for Democrats to take the gloves off at last in their ethics campaign against the majority. Right as well is this subscription-only New Republic editorial:

But, while it's easy to see why high-ranking Democrats like Pelosi and Menendez would hold their fire, it's not clear why rank-and-file Democrats would go along. House rules give the minority party virtually no power--except over ethics matters. Which means that pretty much the only way for Democrats to regain the majority is through the kind of ruthless assault on corruption that invariably endangers congressmen on both sides of the aisle. As THE NEW REPUBLIC's Michael Crowley has noted ("Learning from Newt," January 24), Newt Gingrich grasped this logic intuitively when he fanned the flames of the House banking scandal in the early '90s. Gingrich believed that, while seizing on ethics presented real risks--Gingrich himself was implicated, albeit on a relatively small scale--a scandal that touched almost everyone in Congress would invariably hurt Democrats more, since they controlled the House. Conversely, a refusal to risk collateral damage might have saved some longtime GOP incumbents but done nothing to return the party to power.

I don’t, in fact, believe the desire to protect corrupt Democrats is all that is keeping the minority party from a full-bore ethics assault, though that is certainly one factor. A deep-seated and crippling over-cautiousness still colors the strategic approach of much of the congressional Democratic leadership -- an aversion to going overboard on negative attacks and an instinctive desire to wait for scandals to unfold of their own accord, thus leaving no partisan fingerprints. It’s an instinct Democrats will want to overcome, quickly. Now is a time for relentless procedural and symbolic pressure to be brought to bear on Republican malfeasance. (That criminal investigations will likely impede for the time being the progress of ethics committee inquiries into Tom DeLay or Bob Ney, for instance, should not excuse the Democrats from filing ethics complaints against them and hammering away in the press.)

“Get tough” admonitions to the Dems come cheap, and are often wrong; there’s no doubt, moreover, that the minority leadership understands the importance of ethics in next year’s elections. But more really could be done, right away.

--Sam Rosenfeld

I agree with Sam here, but it's a political point for me more than anything. File the ethics complaints now, and who knows, they might just gestate into something really substantive by the time mid-terms roll around. To put it another way, there's that old saying that if you throw enough mud, eventually something will stick. I'll modify that by saying this: make no mistake, this isn't mud getting flinged around, it's excrement, and that stuff always sticks. And once voters really get a good whiff of it, they might just change their minds when they cast their next vote. Markos of the Daily Kos adds some more:

Corruption isn't a partisan issue by kos Sun Aug 14th, 2005 at 22:11:58 PDT

Some day, once the current GOP dominance collapses under the weight of their corruption, we'll have Dems playing the same dirty game. Republicans rally around their sleaziest bad-government practicioners, as we know the elephant flies above the Stars and Stripes to the typical Bush/DeLay apologist.

The moral imperative behind a "clean government" crusade is self-evident. But there's also a practical reason to oppose corruption even amongst Democrats -- it's a sure-fire way to lose elections. Rampant Democratic corruption cost us Congress in 1994, and we've yet to recover. And continued Democratic corruption has made House Dems wary of charging ahead with the "corruption" theme to hard, lest some of the current members get snared in the web.

Good. Let those who sit in Congress enriching themselves go down. They are supposed to be doing the people's business, not their own. Unlike the GOP apologists, I consider corruption a non-partisan issue. I'd like to see them all thrown out with the Capitol trash.

If anyone wonders why I'm such a Schweitzer fan, here's another reason:

Gov. Brian Schweitzer has asked Democrat Bob Rowe, the former chairman of state Public Service Commission, not to work on the governor's upcoming energy conference because Rowe is associated with a lobbying firm that represents several energy companies.

The governor's office had previously hired Rowe to help organize the conference. Rowe has been released from that job.

"It's simply policy," Schweitzer said. "I believe passionately that you can only serve one master. When we have chosen people to work for us, we have chosen people who will commit themselves to working for all the people of Montana, not a special interest." [...]

Schweitzer said he found out late last week that Rowe was listed as a Gallatin Group lawyer. He said he felt removing Rowe from his position with the symposium was in keeping with his policy of not involving lobbyists to be involved in state government projects.

That's clean government in action.

(Oh, and Kerry is trying to capture a bit of the Schweitzer magic. Man, if two politicians were ever polar opposites...)

Call me an unrealistic idealist, but Kos has it right here. If there's filthy Dems that get caught up in the dragnet, so be it. They should "retire" as well. But right now, the ground is furtile, and the criminal activity is occurring over there on the Right. It's something that Democrats need to bring to the fore. What do they have to lose anyway?

Update: I almost forgot, if you're looking for more on this stuff, go check out the Auction House at the TPM Cafe...

posted by FuzzFinger @ 8/16/2005 05:48:00 PM