Moral Equivalency
Nov 30th, 2005 at 7:26 pm by Susie
From Josh:
Reader comment …
You’ve sort of hinted at this, but what’s truly amazing about the attempts to paint this corruption as equally applicable to both parties is this: The essence of the K Street strategy pioneered by DeLay and Norquist and run today by Blount and Santorum is to deny Democratic politicians the chance to be dealmakers and players on the Hill - or to put it another way, to deny them access to the sort of “honest graft,” policy horsetrading, and borderline bribery that brings in campaign donations and keeps a political party flush and strong. That’s why they try to pass everything on narrow party-line votes; why they muck up legislation so that even centrist Dems can’t stomach voting for it; why they pressure trade associations not to hire Democrats. They can argue either that the sort of influence peddling that has nabbed Ney, the Duke, and others is rare and they shouldn’t be tarred with it, or they can argue that it’s so common it’s unremarkable and not worthy of notice. That’s their choice. But they themselves have made clear that they want to own the racket outright. They have done everything they can to make sure that Democrats don’t have the opportunity to sell policymaking to the highest bidder. That’s the essence of the machine. Having largely succeeded, they then go whine to the papers when the more envelope-pushing activities trigger an investigation, and say they’re not the only ones who do it? Unbelievable.
Yep. If only we had a group of professional information-gatherers and disseminators in the capital whose job it was to follow this stuff and report to the public.
Hear Hear. It’s hard to blame Democrats for everything when there aren’t any more in charge. You wanted to take all the credit, GOP? Take all the pain. You wanted to win at any costs? There are indeed costs. You wanted to rise to power in the name of the moral majority? Fall amid scandal and corruption.
I’m waiting for the first Demo to get caught in the current round-up. The msm will be all over that bastard. Not that I will cry any tears. But it will be interesting to see how it will be treated. Very differently, you suppose?