Saturday, November 11, 2006

Republicans off to a lousy start in dealing with corruption

The Republicans, like the Democrats, are off to a lousy start in dealing with corruption in response to the mid-term election results. One of the worst Republican sleazy tricks in this election (along with the harassing robocalls designed to appear like they were coming from the Democrats, mailers designed to look like sex offender notices, mailers from fake "progressive" organizations, calling Democrats and telling them that their polling places had changed, and other deceptive calls and vote suppression tactics) was Michael Steele's hiring homeless people from Philadelphia to hand out flyers to voters in Maryland, telling them that Steele was the Democratic candidate. This was a repeat of a tactic Steele also used in the 2002 election.

It didn't work, but the Republicans thought highly enough of it to ask him to be the next chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The Republicans need to stop being so quick to forgive their own for moral failings and corruption and start showing some accountability and principle. A good start would be getting rid of Karl Rove, who has been right in the middle of the sleaziest of the sleaze.

UPDATE (November 13, 2006): Looks like Steele will not be the next RNC chairman after all--it will go to Rep. Mel Martinez of Florida instead. But the point still holds, as Martinez is connected to Jack Abramoff via former Rep. Bob Ney (who resigned after pleading guilty to corruption charges in the Abramoff scandal) and is in the middle of his own campaign finance scandal.

3 comments:

Seven Star Hand said...

Good post Jim,

Now comes the truly important work of preventing the last six years from ever happening again. As long as people cling to money, religion, and politics, these seemingly never-ending cycles of evil scoundrels, war, great struggles, and repeated injustices will never end.

These scoundrels need to be taught a lesson about truth and justice that humanity will take to heart, once and for all.

Did it ever dawn on you that money, religion, and politics are the prime sources of human struggle and continuing to beat a dead horse (or donkey, or elephant) will never solve our seemingly never-ending cycles of calamities? One good lesson to take from this election is that politics is a cycle that will always produce greedy scoundrels who must later be defeated or else. Why beat your heads against the same old wall when the door has been sighted and waiting for you to open your eyes and "see the light?" Truth, Wisdom, and Justice are non-political, non-religious, and non-monetary.

Here is Wisdom !!

Lippard said...

I think it comes down to money and power--the root of the problem here is that the U.S. federal government is dealing with such huge sums of money and power that corruption is bound to follow. The best way to solve that is to restrict it on both counts.

Richard Carrier offers some suggestions, and I've added a few more in comments on his post.

Lippard said...

David Brin has a number of specific concrete suggestions for what the Democrats can do to clean up the House of Representatives.