I think that just about everyone has known -- or at least strongly suspected -- that corruption can run pretty deep in Washington, DC. But who could've thought up the idea to corrupt the corruption?
For over ten years, but particularly since George W. Bush took office, powerful Republicans, among them Tom DeLay and Senator Rick Santorum, of Pennsylvania, have been carrying out what they call the "K Street Project," an effort to place more Republicans and get rid of Democrats in the trade associations and major national lobbying organizations that have offices on K Street in downtown Washington (although, of course, some have offices elsewhere).
The Republican purge of K Street is a more thorough, ruthless, vindictive, and effective attack on Democratic lobbyists and other Democrats who represent businesses and other organizations than anything Washington has seen before.
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The Republicans don't simply want to take care of their friends and former aides by getting them high-paying jobs: they want the lobbyists they helped place in these jobs and other corporate representatives to arrange lavish trips for themselves and their wives; to invite them to watch sports events from skyboxes; and, most important, to provide a steady flow of campaign contributions. The former aides become part of their previous employers' power networks. Republican leaders also want to have like-minded people on K Street who can further their ideological goals by helping to formulate their legislative programs, get them passed, and generally circulate their ideas. When I suggested to Grover Norquist, the influential right-wing leader and the leading enforcer of the K Street Project outside Congress, that numerous Democrats on K Street were not particularly ideological and were happy to serve corporate interests, he replied, "We don't want nonideological people on K Street, we want conservative activist Republicans on K Street."
From the horse's mouth, to journalist Elizabeth Drew. These paragraphs are excerpted from the opening section of Elizabeth Drew's article in the New York Review of Books, where she reports on how not only have the radical organizers of the Republican party managed to redefine grassroots politics, they seem to have taken over the smoke-filled rooms as well.
Drew continues:
When the Republicans first announced the K Street Project after they won a majority in Congress in the 1994 election, they warned Washington lobbying and law firms that if they wanted to have appointments with Republican legislators they had better hire more Republicans. This was seen as unprecedentedly heavy-handed, but their deeper purposes weren't yet understood. Since the Democrats had been in power on Capitol Hill for a long time, many of the K Street firms then had more Democrats than Republicans or else they were evenly balanced. But the Democrats had been hired because they were well connected with prominent Democrats on Capitol Hill, not because Democratic Congresses demanded it. Moreover, it makes sense for lobbying firms that want access to members of Congress to hire people with good contacts in the majority party--especially former members or aides of the current leaders. But the bullying tactics of Republicans in the late 1990s were new.
DeLay, Santorum, and their associates organized a systematic campaign, closely monitored by Republicans on Capitol Hill and by Grover Norquist and the Republican National Committee, to put pressure on firms not just to hire Republicans but also to fire Democrats. With the election of Bush, this pressure became stronger. A Republican lobbyist told me, "Having the White House" has made it more possible for DeLay and Santorum "to enforce the K Street Project." Several Democratic lobbyists have been pushed out of their jobs as a result; business associations who hire Democrats for prominent positions have been subject to retribution. They are told that they won't be able to see the people on Capitol Hill they want to see. Sometimes the retribution is more tangible. The Republican lobbyist I spoke to said, "There's a high state of sensitivity to the partisanship of the person you hire for these jobs that did not exist five, six years ago--you hire a Democrat at your peril."
Now I don't know about you, but I find this rather ... alarming? Disgusting? Not all that surprising? Remember when Newt Gingrich stood on the Capitol Steps for their photo-op annoucing their "Contract on with America"? Here they were, announcing how they were going to clean up politics. (Tom DeLay was there, by the way.)
And yet today the Republican Congress seems to be as corrupt as any in history. Skeptical? Just look at how many times Congressmen and Senators voted against their own party platforms, against their constituents, in order to pass a bill that coddled their keepers -- these K Street lobbyists. One example of such behavior was the passing of the Credit Card Company Welfare Act (also known as the Bankruptcy Reform bill).
How dispiriting it is to learn that not only have the politicians largely been corrupted, but their own corruptors have been corrupted. The foreign and multinational corporation lobbying force in Washington has been sculpted by the Republicans into a radical right-wing advocacy wing of unofficial Washington.
Kind of like mold growing on rot.
This is why you won't see any meaningful reform of healthcare. This is why you won't see any cleanup of our electoral process. People are making money ripping us off, and the only thing the party in power in Washington gives a damn about is that the thieves are radical conseratives.
How's that for a Contract On America?