But right now the ethics avalanche is headed toward the GOP for a few reasons. One is simply par for the course, the other the party has brought on itself.This current lobbying scandal is a direct result of the Republican effort, led by Tom DeLay, to incorporate the K-Street firms into the Republican Party as an effective arm of government. It was not just a method of obtaining money for the Republican machine. It was also a place to send Republican activists who effectively took control of many of the lobbying efforts and as a side effect, was a place to locate Republican activists where they could obtain personal financial rewards far in excess of what they could get when employed by the government.
First, ethics violations tend to rain down on the party in power because they are the folks in the best position to grant favors. After all, if you are going to sit through and pay for a dinner full of bad jokes with a self-important glad-hander, make it the right self- important glad-hander. And since 2001, the Republicans have owned this town.
The second reason, however, is a bit more troublesome for the GOP.
In 1995, when the party took control of both houses of Congress, it initiated what it called the K Street Project. The party pressured lobbying firms and trade associations to hire Republicans and punished firms that didn't. The result was to make the relationship between those organizations and the GOP much deeper than they normally would have been otherwise - and, of course, to channel more money into Republican coffers in the hopes of building a "permanent majority" in Washington.
In other words, the Republican leadership invited lobbying organizations to essentially become another arm of the party. How close were the relationships? Investigators are now focusing on another firm, Alexander Strategies, which was founded by Edwin Buckham, Mr. DeLay's former chief of staff. At one point Americans for a Republican Majority, a political action committee that raised money for DeLay, was run out of the offices of Alexander. And Alexander also paid DeLay's wife more than $100,000 in consulting fees while the firm was working with ... Mr. Abramoff.
You can only wonder, what was the GOP leadership thinking? It can only be a matter of time before relationships like that blow up because of simple association - or worse.
When the biggest and most powerful lobby firms are webbed into the majority party so closely, all it takes is a misstep or two before everyone is up to their knees in problems. And the K Street Project means a whole host of GOP powerbrokers is under a cloud now, from DeLay to Ralph Reed to Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform.
Did Democrats Dan Rostankowski and James Trafficanti serve time for misusing their office for financial gain? Yeah. But they were rogue individuals. The level to which the Republicans have taken the money grabbing efforts controlled by lobbyists is something not seen since the Tea Pot Dome scandals (also Republican) early in the twentieth century.
While I blame the Republicans for the Abramoff/DeLay scandal, this is not a partisan issue as much as a failure of American democracy. Wearing my partisan Democratic Party hat, I would love to see my party take advantage of this Republican failure. Much more significant, wearing my hat as an American proud of Constitutional democracy I fear for the future of our Republic, and I really want a change in the system without regard to partisan advantage.
Josh Marshall (TPM) today has a post that focuses on what is really important.
The talk of the day now in DC is 'lobbying reform', which Mark Schmitt aptly pillories over at TPMCafe. We may need new laws to curb the power moneyed interests now have over policy-making. In fact, I think we do.
But that's not the problem in Washington. The problem is a network of criminal activity stretching from the House of Representatives (and, to a lesser degree, the Senate) to K Street and then into the Executive Branch -- a network of bribery, money-laundering and fraud all aimed at selling public policy and official actions not in exchange for political contributions but money rewards to members of Congress, administration officials and their families.
It's not an abstract problem or a merely a few politicians lining their pockets or high-speed log-rolling. As Schmitt puts it, it's a betrayal-of-public-trust, a group of high-ranking politicians who've committed crimes against their constituents and a Republican establishment that wasn't against it then and can't bring itself to turn the folks in even now.
The Abramoff/DeLay scandal is a threat to the American way of life. I really hope that Republican politicians recognize this even as it threatens their partisan advantages.
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