The Wall Street Journal‘s Kim Strassel notes something Mark and I know all too well, that the Blagojevich scandal is just the typical iceberg of Democrat corruption…
A note to all those visitors who will soon flood Washington for the inauguration: Be careful of the “swamp.”
That would be the swamp Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed to drain when she led her party to victory in 2006. The GOP had been rocked by scandal, and Mrs. Pelosi and Democrats won, in part, by promising to clean up the “culture of corruption” that pervaded Washington.
Instead, Democrats now have an image problem. The real issue isn’t so much Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s Senate-seat auction, as it is the focus that his scandal has directed toward a wider assortment of Democratic troubles. This isn’t great timing for Barack Obama, who campaigned on cleaner government.
The Blagojevich drama is titillating enough, and local Democrats’ dithering over how to fill Mr. Obama’s seat guarantees it will remain a storyline longer than is comfortable. But the Illinois drama has also thrust new light on the ongoing ethical controversies of House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel. At the rate the House Ethics Committee is receiving complaints — over Mr. Rangel’s real-estate problems, tax problems, his privately sponsored trips to the Caribbean, and donations to his center in New York — this too will make headlines for a while.
This is actually something Mark and I mentioned in our book, Caucus of Corruption. Since Republicans were in the majority in 2006, it was easier for the Democrats to charge corruption against the majority — while their own rampant corruption went unreported on. Perhaps now that the Democrats will be in total power for the next two years the media will shift focus back on the corruption that has been rampant in the Democratic Party for years.
To do our part to help, of course there is our book, which still has lots of relevant information, and there is Democrat Corruption, our new, rebranded and relaunched version of No Agenda, which chronicled Democrat corruption between 2005 and 2007. This new site includes all our earlier content, as well as new material recently added, that will continue to grow.
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