While the evidence against Mollohan is very thin, he was right to step down. But that's not the main point.

The point is that the Republicans are, provably, more corrupt than the Democrats are. All the politicians who are under investigation in the Abramoff scandal are Republicans (no, Harry Reid is not under investigation). And that does not mean that Republicans are inherently more corrupt than Democrats. It means that Republicans have the power in Washington. Democrats don't take bribes because they're not offered bribes: you don't bribe someone who has no power to give you anything.

More than that, Abramoff and DeLay and so forth were specifically engaged in a project to strip Democrats of any power. That was the whole point of the "K Street Project," to make sure that most lobbyists were Republicans and that most lobbyist money went to Republicans. (That was also the point of DeLay's successful attempts to strip the Democrats of any power to influence legislation.) Under such a project, of course the corruption was purely Republican: the Democrats weren't supposed to be part of it. Abramoff was careless; when the Democrats were in power, corrupt Democrats would sometimes invite a Republican into their schemes just to make it look "bi-partisan" in case they got caught. (That's how McCain was implicated in the Keating Five thing.) Abramoff and his gang apparently didn't think they'd ever get caught.

So saying that there is a "Republican culture of corruption" is perfectly accurate. Republicans run Washington. Any culture of corruption is theirs, because the Congress is theirs.

"The point is that the Republicans are, provably, more corrupt than the Democrats are"....lol what, today?!?

"while the evidence against Mollohan is very thin"... LOL, you didn't have the same deferential attitude to the initial reports on DEE-LAY, didja? And do tyou really wanna cite to KOS for your authority?

Please.

Neither Republican nor Democrat owns the franchise on vanity, greed, mendacity or corruption. None of them are a product of idology. All of them are a product of power. And the greater and longer-running the power, the greater the exposition of vanity, greed, mendacity and corruption.

So, M.A., remember many years from now if the Dems ever manage (despite their best efforts) to control Congress AND the White House, when the future Rostys, Cohellos and the like come under the spotlight and you are defending them against comments like "the Dems are more corrupt than the Repubs," that all of this business is cyclical.

Neither Republican nor Democrat owns the franchise on vanity, greed, mendacity or corruption. None of them are a product of idology. All of them are a product of power. And the greater and longer-running the power, the greater the exposition of vanity, greed, mendacity and corruption.

Look again at my original comment; that's exactly what I said: "that does not mean that Republicans are inherently more corrupt than Democrats."

The point is that as of the last twelve years, the Republicans have been more corrupt than the Democrats -- because the Republicans have had almost all the power in Congress, while the Democrats have had even less power than Republicans had when they were in the minority.

The point is that's it's ridiculous to talk as if the Democrats are just as guilty of corruption as the Republicans. If they were in power, maybe they would be -- but out of power, it is impossible to be be that corrupt, because they have nothing to offer those who would try to corrupt them.

If you want to bribe someone to get legislation passed, you don't bribe a member of the minority party.

M.A.

The point is that's it's ridiculous to talk as if the Democrats are just as guilty of corruption as the Republicans. If they were in power, maybe they would be -- but out of power, it is impossible to be be that corrupt, because they have nothing to offer those who would try to corrupt them.

M.A., there are many, many places in the United States where the Democrats run everything. Are you not counting corruption in state politics in Louisiana and New Jersey, for example?

Also, the Mollohan case itself disproves your central thesis, that bribes are only offered to the party in power. Mollohan was not in the majority party... but he was still powerful (as is Harry Reid).

Incidentally, there is a lot more evidence directly connecting Reid to Abramoff than directly connecting Tom DeLay to Abramoff, for which there is no evidence at all.

The only DeLay-Abramoff connections, tenuous as they are, are indirect: Abramoff bribed some guy who used to work for Tom DeLay.

Finally, you appear to be redefining the word "corruption" to be far more expansive than what people normally mean. I've noted this tendency of liberals before -- in particular anent the term "civil war" -- and even occasionally among conservatives, as when they call any immigration bill that goes an inch beyond the punitive "amnesty."

It's really annoying, and I wish you all (on both sides) would stop it.

Dafydd

I was talking about Republicans in Washington. Where Democrats run everything, there is often corruption, sure. Democrats have built corrupt machines in places like New Jersey, just like, in Ohio, one-party Republican rule has led to incredible corruption. It's not really a Republicans vs. Democrats thing -- one-party rule always breeds corruption.

What makes the corruption problem worse in Washington than elsewhere is that Abramoff and DeLay and others specifically tried to pull every lever to cement one-party rule. I'm not just talking about illegal stuff (for example, Abramoff and DeLay may have contributed to the New Hampshire Republicans' cheating in the Senate election in 2002, cheating that has sent several Republicans to jail), but the K Street Project (which was legal, but sleazy) and DeLay's using all kinds of loopholes to make sure the Democrats could never influence legislation in any way. To the extent that the Republicans were trying to create permanent, absolute one-party rule, they were creating a culture of corruption: the more absolute one-party rule is, the more corruption (in an "expansive" sense) there will be.

To fix this, it won't be enough to kick the Republicans out, though it might help in the short term (divided government is usually better). The key, bi-partisan solutions are to:

a) Combat gerrymandering, make Congressional districts more competitive, so that Congressmen of both parties actually have to worry about re-election, and can't just spend their time getting fat and lazy, and

b) Make it easier for minority members or bi-partisan coalitions to bring legislation to the floor for a vote, so that one party can't totally dominate everything.

Unfortunately, neither of these things will happen: both parties benefit from gerrymandering, and when the Democrats get back the House they'll freeze the minority out of everything just as the Republicans do. The system is broken, and it's not all the Republicans' fault -- but they're the ones in charge now and they should be doing something.

You're confused about Reid, though. He took money from Indian tribes, which Nevada reps often do -- but the tribes were Abramoff's victims, not his representatives. Abramoff's bribes always went to Republicans, mostly because he was a partisan Republican and didn't believe in helping Democrats in any way.

BTW, Matthew Continetti, a conservative reporter for the Weekly Standard, has a book coming out which gives a better idea of what DeLay and Abramoff and others have been up to in the past decade: The K Street Gang : The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine. Again, some of this was legal, some of it was not, but all of it was more about building a machine than serving the people.

There's also this Jonathan Rauch article on DeLay's philosophy of government (basically: pork, pork, pork).

M.A.

To the extent that the Republicans were trying to create permanent, absolute one-party rule, they were creating a culture of corruption....

That's not what the word "corruption" means.

Words have meanings.

• In normal conversation, corruption means criminally soliciting, accepting, or offering payment for favors or influence.
• It does not mean working to ensure that the majority party in a legislative body has control of the legislation.
• It does not mean working to persuade lobbying firms to hire Republicans.
• It doesn't even mean gerrymandering districts; that is not "corruption."

What you are doing is redefining the word -- but still relying upon residual opprobrium from the original meaning to lend a false aura of criminality to ordinary behavior.

It's the same technique used by Andrea Dworkin when she first redefined the word "rape" to include all heterosexual sex... and then went around saying that all heterosexual men were rapists.

I will not accept your redefinition. Find the correct word.

Dafydd

MA: Your first sentence above is, "the point is that the Republicans are, provably, more corrupt than the Democrats are." From that, you had (admirably) backed off, for which I applaud you. And I agree with Dafydd's observation regarding this intellectually dishonest phrase "culture of corruption."

To the extent that you want to more loosely define the word "corruption" to include sleazy activity that is not technically illegal (and I wouldn't have a problem with that, because in my opinion, unethical conduct is corrupt, even if it is not illegal --and as a lawyer, I am particularly sensitive to that), the "culture" did not get created by Republicans -- it has always been a part of the political system, from the very beginning, in this country and all others.

Again, it is a product of vanity, greed and mendacity -- all designs of a decidedly non-partisan Adversary.

Let's see, how does that phrase go again?
Power corrupts and absolute power......

@MA,

Balderdash I say. If anything, it is the Democrats that have promoted a "culture of corruption" by pushing socialism for more than 100 years. Simply put, there'd be no need for a 'K Street Project' if Democrats in elected positions, with willing Judicial accomplices had not expanded the scope of the Federal government far, far beyond its Constitutional limits. After all, who'd care a whit about Congress enough to try to 'bribe' them if Congress didn't have the power of life or death over business.

Not only is lobbying legal, it is protected by the First Amendment, which is the petitioning of Congress by representatives of the people for the redress of grievances. While bribery isn't moral nor legal, there wouldn't be the incentives for it were Congress (and the Federal government overall) limited to its Art. 1, Sec. 8 powers *as written*, not as "interpreted" by various socialists.

Like campaign contributions, lobbying should have essentially no limits. What should be done is public posting of dates, times, places, amounts of gifts, amounts of travel paid by third parties, etc. within 48 to 72 hours of each incident.

Thanks for hissing in, . Now you can slither in with a comment, o wise. (sign out)

(If you haven't hissed a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Hang loose; don't shed your skin!)

URL:
Remember me unto the end of days? AyeNay!

Comments: (Sssselect text and bite a button to apply HTML tagssssss...)