RAHM AND ETHICS-- GO TOGETHER LIKE A PIG AND CARRIAGE

Some really nice people invited me to join an online political chat group a couple years ago. I don't know if it was the first day or the first week-- could've been the first hour-- after I joined that I let lose with one of my Rahm Emanuel tirades. This particular one was about how he is the Democratic Party version of Tom DeLay. Not all Democrats hold that point of view-- particularly not the ones on his payroll. I just got blasted by this one guy who demanded documentary evidence. Oddly enough, documentary evidence had just been sent to me the night before-- which was the impetus for me launching that particular attack-- from a congressional candidate in Florida being aggressively pressured by Emanuel and Hoyer to get out of the race to make way for their ex-Republican-Republican-at-heart candidate. The documents weren't for me to share and it turns out the Rahm defender worked in his office.

Emanuel very much is the Tom DeLay of Democratic Party politics, a ruthless, machine pol who certainly has a much better voting record than DeLay but who has the same nauseatingly corrupt mentality. If the American party system is more than just two groupings of more-or-less random professional insider politicians whose career ambitions are first-and-foremost in their minds (think Harold Ford or John McCain, two perfect examples), the Rahm is just a tough team player. If the Democratic Party actually stands for something worth fighting for and sacrificing for, then there is no place for someone as unscrupulous and abhorrent as Rahm Emanuel.

When I was growing up, some of the worst-- corrupt and reactionary-- politicians in America, people promoting war and the Military Industrial Complex and, shamefully, hanging on to the last vestiges of racism and bigotry were Democrats. And-- although plenty were-- they weren't all in The South. My own Brooklyn congressman, Emmanuel Celler, as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee kept important legislation bottled up, particularly the Equal Rights Amendment, and the Daley Machine in Chicago is well known as a reactionary and authoritarian throwback, enemy of all progressives. (Ironically, Rahm Emanuel is the current congressional representative of the Daley Machine.) Senators like John Stennis (MS), Bennett Johnston (LA), Strom Thurmond (SC), Allen Ellender (LA), John Sparkman (AL), Herman Talmadge (GA), Spessard Holland (FL), James Eastland (MS) ran as Democrats but had virtually nothing to do with the Democratic Party ideals and values of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Phil Gramm all started their political careers out as Democrats before realizing they had far more in common, ideologically, with the Republicans. It isn't calling yourself a Democrat that means anything at all to me; it's what you stand for.

Rahm Emanuel, like DeLay, stands for corruption and bossism-- above and beyond each man's ideological positions. In his column yesterday Robert Novak has a telling few paragraphs on Emanuel that should surprise no DWT reader:

A new, high-grade Democratic lobbying firm in Washington is sponsoring a top-dollar fund-raising breakfast for Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, on Feb. 13 at the Phoenix Park Hotel on Capitol Hill.
The principal host is David W. Jones, who ran the extensive 2006 fund-raising campaign by Rep. Charles Rangel of New York.
Jones and the other hosts listed on the invitation are all Democrats and former congressional staffers now associated with Capitol Counsel, a newly formed lobbyist firm unveiled after the 2006 election. They are Zahra Buck, Shannon Finley, James C. Gould, Daniel Papadopoulos and John D. Raffaelli.
The invitation to the 8:30 a.m. event appears to have been sent to names on the mailings by Rangel last year to get support for a Democratic-controlled House that made him Ways and Means Committee chairman.
Recipients include Republican lobbyists who work on legislation at Ways and Means (which includes Emanuel as a member).
The cost of attending: contributions ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 for Friends of Rahm Emanuel.

It is virtually impossible to have a functioning democracy if it is for sale. Because of people like Rahm Emanuel and Tom DeLay our capital in a whore house. Public financing of elections is the only way this will ever be solved. Minor tinkering and so-called "reform" to ethics and lobbying policies are a joke-- a joke by Rahm Emanuel that we are the butt of.