While seemingly everyone is lining up to offer explanations for Democrats’ historic defeat last Tuesday, one seemingly obvious reason for the GOP landslide has gone unremarked upon: Widespread, systemic corruption in the Democratic Party.
Unlike the 2006 election, when Republicans were reeling from major scandals, we heard next to nothing this year about “a culture of corruption,” thanks to a Democrat-friendly media and the fear of being publicly called racist for pointing out that the Congressional Black Caucus has a lot of bad apples. But it’s hard to deny an overwhelming amount of scandal during the last year.
Post-election, we’re about to start on two high-profile congressional ethics trials for Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. Rangel’s accused of everything from misusing the House parking garage to hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of tax evasion. Waters helped arrange a $12 million TARP bailout of OneUnited, a bank in which her husband had a significant financial interest and once served on the board.
Two more members of the CBC, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, and Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., were revealed to have funneled money from that organization’s scholarship fund to aides and relatives. (The New York Times helpfully noted earlier this year that the CBC spent more money catering a single event last year than on the scholarship fund they were robbing.)
You can add Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., to the CBC’s list of suspect members. He was investigated by the feds for promoting a charity for victims of Hurricane Katrina where the funds mysteriously vanished.
Outside of the CBC, Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., resigned for “snorkeling” his young aides. And let’s not forget the scandal involving the White House using Bill Clinton in an attempt to bribe two candidates with federal jobs to get them out of their Democratic primaries in Colorado and Pennsylvania. West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin’s administration was served with federal subpoenas twice during his Senate campaign.
Then there’s Illinois. Democrats tried to replace Sen. Roland Burris, accused of buying his seat from now-convicted former governor Rod Blagojevich, with state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, famous for running his family bank into the ground and making loans to the mob.
And let’s not forget Sen. John “Reporting for Duty-Free” Kerry who docked his yacht in Rhode Island to avoid the taxes in his home state of Massachusetts. Even House Speaker Nancy “Drain the Swamp” Pelosi exhausted voters’ patience by using the Air Force as her personal taxi, costing taxpayers millions.
At first glance, it may not look like all this scandal cost the Democrats much. Rangel, Waters and the other corrupt black caucus members were re-elected to their gerrymandered districts. Even if corruption did cost Illinois Democrats a Senate seat, Democratic voters in that state were still masochistic enough to elect a Blago-tainted Democratic governor. The popular Manchin pulled out a win, and the White House bribery scandal didn’t keep Bennet from winning in Colorado.
But many of these scandals aren’t going away, either. The ethics trials for Rangel and Waters have yet to commence and will likely get a lot of press coverage. Manchin has to run for office again in 2012 while a federal investigation of his administration commences.
A historic victory for Republicans this big suggests that there are bigger issues at play than the dynamics in the individual races. It suggests that the Democrats have a tarnished brand. The endless reports of scandal by Democratic lawmakers surely had a big impact on the national mood.
The question is, will Democrats even realize the extent of this problem, and are they going to do anything about it?
Mark Hemingway is an editorial page staff writer for The Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected].
