If Republican Rep. Aaron Schock of Illinois was hoping to find a friend in conservative media, he might want to look elsewhere.
Several conservative writers have recently condemned Schock, who is facing a federal ethics probe after news reports that he subsidized his glamorous lifestyle using Republican donor money and taxpayer funds.
Erick Erickson, editor of the right-leaning grassroots blog RedState, called on Schock to resign.
“His lack of responsibility with the funds of others shows him to lack the necessary integrity to handle the power of the purse in the House of Representatives, which remains the chief power of the House,” Erickson wrote Tuesday. “He should resign.”
Though it has yet to be determined if Schock has engaged in illegal activity (he has said he hopes he hasn’t), Charles Cooke, an influential columnist at National Review, said Schock is a “crook.”
Schock “has exhibited a penchant for taxpayer-financed luxury hotels and private aircraft that is flatly incompatible with both his conservative rhetoric and the political presumptions of a free nation,” Cooke said in a recent column. “Let’s say it, aloud: Aaron Schock is a crook.”
Schock came under scrutiny after a February Washington Post article about the congressman’s elaborately redecorated office: a”Downton Abbey”-inspired style showcase put together by the design firm Euro Trash at no cost. That arrangement put Schock afoul of rules limiting gifts to lawmakers. Subsequent examinations of his records have found falsified expense-report items and expensive air travel. Schock’s defense — including comments to Politico Wednesday suggesting many other House members also live large — has been colorful, but it does not appear to have blunted the embarrassing narrative.
A lawyer within his district, Mark Zalcman, now says he will challenge Schock for his seat in the GOP primary next year. Zalcman made the announcement Monday, saying he would run “because Washington needs the Gospel.”
“[I]n this coming election cycle, an earnest and moralizing candidate for Congress is probably better than the status quo,” wrote Noah Rothman at the Hot Air blog, a popular website among conservatives. “Aaron Schock is embroiled in far too many allegations of corruption to be a coincidence.”
Rothman said that Shock seems “purely interested in enjoying the good life at the public’s expense.”
At 33, Schock is among the youngest members of Congress. When he was first elected, he was 27. John Podhoretz, editor of the right-leaning Commentary magazine, said age might factor into Schock’s current predicament.
“Theory: Aaron Schock is what happens when you elect someone who’s too young to Congress,” Podhoretz tweeted in February.
