ROY BLUNT'S CORRUPTION MAY BE A GOP GIFT TO THE DEMOCRATS BUT ULTIMATELY EMANUEL WILL BE A GIFT OF EQUAL VALUE TO REPUBLICANS

Yesterday we reported how conservative Republican icon Richard Viguerie was bemoaning the re-election of John Boehner and Roy Blunt to the GOP House leadership. "Boehner and Blunt's close ties to big government lobbyists," Viguerie pointed out, "indicate that the Republican Party will continue to represent Corporate America over the interests of Main Street America."

In today's New York Times Thomas Edsall points out that in voting for Blunt particularly, Republican House members handed the Democrats a gift that will keep on giving.

After an election repudiating the politics of Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay, Republicans elevated Blunt from the number three spot in the leadership to number two.

Roy Blunt embodies the insidious, half-legal corruption that has permeated the G.O.P. majority since 1995. Blunt's election as minority whip, by a 137-to-57 margin, was a defiant Republican rejection of calls to clean up their act. Warnings by Blunt's challenger, John Shadegg of Arizona-- "We ceded our reform-minded principles in exchange for a... tighter grip on power"-- went unheeded.

Edsall points out that Blunt, politically a pure Tom DeLay Mini-me, created "an identical network of state and federal political committees that raised money from the same lobbyists, corporations and trade associations that financed what became known as DeLay Inc." Edsall succinctly elucidates how the DeLay-created Republican Culture of Corruption, has been, more recently, operated by Blunt. (Now, many fear, it is being transformed by Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer into an equally venal system of corruption that will finance their own political ambitions to transform the Democratic Party from an agent for change and progress to, basically, a less radical Republican-lite operation-- with plenty of perks for those who play ball).

If one political operation captured the essence of Delay's leadership, it was the Republican takeover of Washington's influence-peddling industry. This industry, grossing $2.36 billion last year alone, eagerly accommodated Delay's demands to replace Democratic lobbyists and association executives with Republicans. In a mutually rewarding relationship, lobbyists who financed DeLay Inc. wrote amendments and bills, while DeLay received a flood of cash to build a multimillion-dollar network of PACs. These committees lavished contributions, corporate jets and year-round entertainment on Republican House members, ensuring their loyalty, and channeled cash into local political parties, helping to win control of state legislatures that, in turn, gerrymandered districts to implement a long-term strategy of larger G.O.P. Congressional majorities.

In 2003, after DeLay moved up to majority leader and turned the so-called K Street Project over to him, Blunt promptly converted a legion of Republican lobbyists into an arm of the House whip operation. Lobbyists have always been close to Congress, under rule by either party. What DeLay and Blunt did was to sacralize this relationship. In doing so, they transferred a chunk of power from Capitol Hill to business interests.

This unholy alliance was a crucial factor in transforming the G.O.P. into an army of spenders whose earmarks, appropriations and tax cuts rivaled the government largess of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.

In 2004, Blunt turned his lobbyist team loose to win passage of a bill eliminating a $50 billion corporate tax break that the World Trade Organization had ruled in violation of international agreements. These lobbyists inserted $143 billion worth of new corporate tax breaks, turning the bill into a Fortune 500 Christmas tree.

Edsall concludes with a thoroughly repulsive portrait of Blunt and his corrupt family crime operation, and reminds the public why principled conservatives-- like Viguerie-- are tearing their hair out over the cementing of Blunt to the Republican power structure. "In Blunt, House Republicans have kept on display a top official reminding voters why they cast ballots for Democrats on Nov. 7. After winning the post of minority whip last week, Blunt declared that the Republicans had 'come together ... frankly, to get rid of the bad habits that we may have developed in 12 years in the majority.' This is precisely the opposite of what they actually did, which was to affirm their bad habits. The burden on the Democrats will be to make the elusive Blunt a nationally recognized figure."

The Democrats have a far greater burden than just demonizing the demon. They need to keep from turning into the demon themselves, a task that was not made any easier with the rise to power of the two most systemically corrupt Democrats in the entire caucus, Emanuel, the new Caucus Chair, and Hoyer, the Majority Leader, both of whom have bragged of their ties to K Street and neither of whom is likely to allow any but the most superficial reforms pass through Congress.


Today Jonathan Weisman reports in the Washington Post on Democratic plans to "tackle" ethics. It doesn't look bad on paper. Nor does it look particularly good. "Despite divisions among Democrats over how far to go in revising ethics rules, House leaders plan a major rollout of an ethics reform bill early next year to demonstrate concern about an issue that helped defeat the Republicans in the midterm elections."

You needn't get too between the lines to read that "divisions" means that Emanuel and Hoyer will prevent any truly significant operational ethics reforms and "demonstrate" smacks of a p.r. move, Emanuel's only discernible talent. Weisman goes on to trumpet a pure p.r. package that will sicken anyone looking for or expecting serious reform. "They will do it with a twist: Instead of forwarding one big bill, Democrats will put together an ethics package on the House floor piece by piece, allowing incoming freshmen to take charge of high-profile issues and lengthening the time spent on the debate. The approach will ensure that each proposal-- including banning gifts, meals and travel from lobbyists as well as imposing new controls on the budget deficit-- is debated on its own and receives its own vote. That should garner far more media attention for the bill's components before a final vote on the entire package."

And not a word about the serious reforms that would separate gushers of corporate cash from the political process, the cash that allowed DeLay, Hastert and Blunt to build their corrupt congressional regime and is now falling into the avaricious and equally corrupt hands of the Rahm Emanuel political machine.