Let me repeat this:
It’s The Corruption, Stupid
That is what we need to understand if we wish to end the War in Iraq, stop George W. Bush, elect a Democrat as President in 2008 and increase our margins in the House, Senate and State Capitals across our Nation.
Corruption is the tipping point!
This should be a simple concept to grasp after the 2006 midterms.
It isn’t.
Some folks seem be too Stupid to get this simple concept.
And by Stupid, I mean the elected Democrats, DLC types, DC-based consultants, lobbyists and even some of our Candidates for President, who seem committed to switching the Republican Culture of Corruption for a Democratic Culture of Corruption.
We have to stop them. We need to keep corruption front and center.
We have to act now. We need a netroots drumbeat that gets loud, persistent and intense until Real Lobbying reform is passed.
Without it, everything else fails.
To the Jump...
I have some experience with the Republican Culture of Corruption. I have been writing about it and the Jack Abramoff Scandal for some time now—and researching this mess since 1999.
Last year, I identified the Abramoff 65 a group of Republican Candidates tied to Jack Abramoff and the Culture of Corruption.
We won 20 of those seats.
We could have won more, but the "brain trust" in DC decided that "corruption" would not be a big issue in 2006, so they stayed away from the issue until it became clear in the fall of 2006 that it really did matter to voters. By then it was way too late.
Barbara Cubin, John Doolittle, Heather Wilson, Marilyn Musgrave, Peter Roskam, Robin Hayes, Mike Ferguson, Jon Porter, Jim Gerlach and some others hung onto their seats because Democrats were slow to realize that corruption would matter to voters.
It was a mistake and some in our Party seem ready to repeat it.
It was the special election for Duke Cunningham’s seat that clouded the issue. Francine Busby ran an awful campaign. Among other failings, her people would not hit Bilbray on his ethical lapses and his long-standing ties to Jack Abramoff and corruption. I know this for a fact as I spent much of my time a year ago trying to get somebody, anybody on her campaign to pay attention to my research and Bilbray’s deep, deep ties to Jack and the abuse on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).
When Bilbray won, the Republican spin was that corruption was a "dead" issue. Perhaps it was years of Pavlovian training that they should always accept GOP spin or maybe it was something else, but regardless of the cause, many DC Consultants and Democratic Campaigns moved away from using corruption as an issue. Worse, fighting Dems who were attacking on the corruption of their Republican opponent, like Charlie Brown in the CA-04, could not get resources or support from the DNC and DCCC for many critical months.
By the fall, everybody realized that corruption was indeed playing with voters. In election after election it was the tipping point. My phone was ringing off the hook with Campaigns looking for last minute ways to tie their Republican opponent to Abramoff and the Culture of Corruption. For many campaigns it was too late. It was an opportunity lost.
Here is how CBS News summed up the impact of corruption (emphasis added):
If voters were only unhappy with Mr. Bush, Republicans might have been able to limit their losses in this election. However, 61 percent of voters also disapproved of the Republican controlled Congress – up from 49 percent disapproval in the 2002 midterm elections for Congress. And 7 in 10 of those disapproving of Congress this year cast their ballots for Democrats.
Throughout the campaign season, Democrats argued that Republicans in Congress represented a "culture of corruption." This theme appears to have resonated among voters. Forty-one percent of voters said that corruption and scandals in government were extremely important in their House vote, with an additional 33 percent saying the issues were very important. Those citing corruption and scandals as very important favored Democratic House candidates by 8 points, and those who said they were extremely important favored Democrats by 24 points.
So for 74% of voters, corruption was either extremely important or very important as they went to the polls.
Corruption is a tipping point indicator. Whatever your pet issue is—the War in Iraq, immigration, health care, abortion, security, etc.—corruption can be seen as the cause when things fail. After years of Republican Rule, the voters decided to give Democrats a chance. They handed us a broom and said clean this mess up. It was a chance to govern. It was a conditional mandate. It was a date.
And the our victory was a lot closer than we think. Without the impact of corruption as a tipping point, we could have easily lost. Just ask Karl Rove (emphasis added):
"The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I'd expected," Rove tells TIME. "Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard [the disgraced evangelical leader] added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass." [snip]
The Republican National Committee has been pointing out that a small shift in votes would have made a big difference. A shift of 77,611 votes would have given Republicans control of the House, according to Bush's political team. And a shift of 2,847 votes in Montana, or 7,217 votes in Virginia, or 41,537 votes in Missouri would have given a Republicans control of the Senate. In addition, the party has calculated that the winner received 51 percent or less in 35 contests, and that 23 races were decided by two percentage points or fewer, 18 races were decided by fewer than 5,000 votes, 15 races were decided by fewer than 4,000 votes, 10 races were decided by fewer than 3,000 votes, eight were decided by fewer than 2,000 votes and five races were decided by fewer than 1,000 votes.
Of those close house races, virtually all of them were on my Abramoff 65 list.
Since the election, many folks have been pointing out the need to make lobbying reform a priority for the 110th Congress. The new Members of Congress, who rode the issue into office, know it. And so does the Speaker.
And yet, other Democrats are going soft on reform. Democrats like John Conyers. He should know better. The excuses for slow-walking reform are lame. And Mcjoan has called them out on the front page and others, like David Sirota have been sounding the alarm on this issue for some time now.
We all need to make some noise. We need to remind every Democrat that:
It’s The Corruption, Stupid
Earlier this week I wrote about The McCain/Bush Corruption Cover-Up. In the Diary I explained that Jack Abramoff was not an exception to the way the Republican Party governed, he was the rule. He only acted the way they all acted. He was the status quo. He was exposed, finally, in 2004. By 2005 more Republican scandals emerged. The number of Republicans under investigation increased again in 2006.
I explained that a pattern was emerging in these many scandals that pointed to a larger criminal conspiracy to convert America into a Kleptocracy.
You can not understand the modern Republican Party or the George W. Bush era without understanding the role of corruption. It is a by-product of their effort to establish One-Party-Rule in the United States. Every choice of this administration has been political. The goal is always to use any leverage to push their dream of One-Party-Rule.
Take 9-11, there was a lot of rhetoric about hunting down those who attacked America, but Republicans focused their fire at political critics and Democrats more than they focused on Al-Queda. Max Cleland, Tom Daschle, Michael Moore, Phil Donahue, the Dixie Chicks, and others had to be stopped, but Bin Laden could get away.
Bush, Rove and the Republican Party politicized the tragedy. It was working. The Iraq War Resolution was just another political trick to defeat Democrats and elect Republicans. By the 2002 midterms many Democrats were defeated because they asked questions and were portrayed by a newly compliant press as not supporting the newly re-branded George W. Bush—a media creation of conviction and resolve. The War was launched in the spring so Bush could run for re-election as a "War President".
It looked like they had won. They really thought they could get away with anything. A Republican crime spree was unleashed upon the land and Abramoff was right in the thick of it.
Way back in the day, Jack had a role in the Iran Contra Scandal. He worked closely with Ollie North as the Executive Director for Citizens for America—a "grass roots" lobbying front created to support Reagan's policies. In this job, Jack would line up the Contra speaking tours. These events were the drops—the places where money would be exchanged.
Iran-Contra was basically a money laundering scandal. It was a complicated effort to move drugs, guns and money around to covertly fund Reagan's Wars. Jack's life work was to expand and improve this system in two ways:
- First, he sought out and included gambling venues as a stabilizing fourth leg of the money laundering network, and
- Second, he pioneered new ways to use the money domestically to help Republicans win local, State and National elections.
Jack was the Karl Rove of money laundering. He was awesome.
Over the years he created a system and he trained hundreds in how to maintain it and use it. Most of those folks are still working today.
Through his partnership with Tom DeLay, Abramoff was able to set up a money washing system within Congress. These are also known as Leadership PACS. In the GOP Congress, the only way to advance was to raise money for your Leadership PAC and then to let the Leadership decide how you would spend it. Those interlocking money washing machines were connected by Jack to a series of "charities", GOP think tanks, advocacy groups, PR firms, consultants and NGO fronts. Together the system could move massive amounts of off-the-books cash from anywhere or anybody to support election fraud, dirty tricks and One-Party-Rule.
By 2004 the Republicans thought they had won a permanent majority. Corruption, cronyism and incompetence flourished in an environment of no Congressional or media oversight. Worse still, many in the Democratic Party had capitulated. Four years ago, in 2003, most of the Democrats running for President were on auto-capitulation. So were the DC based Democrats. Then Howard Dean woke up the Party and helped us mold the netroots into a landscape changing political force.
The DC Consultant class held sway in 2004. We lost.
We loosen their grip in 2006. We won.
Lobbying reform is another battle between reform and the DC insiders.
These are Democrats who envy the money washing machine DeLay and Abramoff built. They do not want to destroy it. Instead they want it to become a Democratic machine.
They are wrong. We need to destroy it.
The House bill on lobbying ethics is HR 2316. The bill addressing bundled donations is HR 2317. The bad news today was that a House Committee watered down the Bills as they were marked up for a floor vote.
It is pressure time.
Demand real lobbying reform. Demand an end to business as usual. The Culture of Corruption is a Republican thing. It has no place among Democrats. Those who seek to protect corruption need to hear from us. They need to feel some heat.
The corruption of politics is at the heart of everything George W. Bush has done. It is why we are in Iraq. It is why Bush is destroying everything he touches. And we will not be able to stop Bush unless we get serious about confronting corruption.
We need to demand that our Presidential Candidates support reform. They should lead. So far they are unimpressive on this issue. And sadly, some of them seem to be oblivious to the need for reform. Senator Clinton comes to mind. She has allowed her campaign to be tied to Jack Abramoff and the money behind his scandals. We should demand she returns the Abramoff connected sweatshop cash in her campaign coffers.
If we back away from corruption we will lose in 2008. This is a tipping point issue and it needs to be front and center.
Write about it and talk about it. Demand that ending corruption in our National politics becomes a core principle of the Democratic Party. If we do that we will win big in 2008.
Let’s push this hard.
Cheers!