Big Oil Provides The Glue Connecting Norm Coleman To Ted Stevens-- And Rampant Corruption

This morning John Ensign (R-NV), who has the unenviable task of holding November's expected Republican losses in the Senate down to 3 or 4, instead of the ten or eleven the Democrats are working towards, lashed out at his fellow GOP senators. According to today's Hill the NRSC chair admitted he wouldn't be able "to make good on a promise to match Democrats 'dollar for dollar' this year, blaming his GOP colleagues for not chipping in." The Democrats have $43 million on hand, almost entirely for winning Republican seats, and the GOP has less than $25 million, which will all go to defending vulnerable Republican incumbents.

“I recently challenged my colleagues to step up to the plate and help me provide the resources our candidates need to compete in races across the country-- to match the DSCC expenditures in targeted races,” Ensign said in a statement. “It has become clear that my call has gone largely unanswered. I have no control over the timing or content of [independent expenditure] ads, but I have had no choice but to decrease the total budget of our IE Unit. It is still my hope that my Republican colleagues will engage in this election and help match what the Democrats are doing. If they do, I will adjust our budget accordingly.”

But the GOP politicians, who believe so fervently in outsourcing-- they have put policies in place that encourage outsourcing of American jobs and have even outsourced, tragically, the responsibilities of the U.S. military-- are now outsourcing their own electoral prospects, counting almost entirely on GOP front operations, like Freedom's Watch, run by right-wing billionaires.

One of the most vulnerable of the Republican incumbents, Minnesota's rubber stamp Norm Coleman, has stepped up his fundraising and has managed to vacuum up an incredible $15,495,493, much of it from the corporate special interests he has served so unflinchingly for the past five years. Among the industries which have "donated" the most to Coleman, repaying him for services delivered are:

Real Estate... $877,280
Insurance... $531,260
Commercial Banks... $418,425
Big Pharma... $329,567
Lobbyists... $300,459
Gas & Oil... $247,900

Ah... yes, Gas & Oil... and lobbyists. And that brings us to Norm and his pal, Alaska's indicted senator Ted Stevens, who-- like Coleman-- has been taking huge bribes from Big Oil interests in return for billions of dollars in tax breaks and rubber stamping of policies that have allowed them to... well, in short, drive up the price of gasoline and heating oil. Stevens went a little further than Coleman-- going beyond the generous definitions the political Establishment uses to define bribery. But Stevens has shared those bribes with his Republican colleagues-- including Coleman. As Stevens prepares for his criminal trial, many of the Republican senators have returned the tainted money-- but not Coleman, who, oddly, gave back some and held on to some.

This doesn't exactly shock me. When I was in elementary school in Brooklyn I ran for secretary of my class. The result was a tie-- between me and an especially nasty little cheat named... Norm Coleman; yep the same one who has gone on the live in Minnesota and scoop up incredible amounts of special interests money while selling out the interests of his constituents. Today I noticed that the Minnesota race had tightened up and was, in effect, in a statistical dead heat-- 41% Al Franken, 40% Norm Coleman, 8% Independence candidate Dean Barkley. (Last week Rasmussen also showed a tie.) Coleman's 46% job approval rating predicts that he will lose in November, just like every other Republican incumbent with less than a 50% approval in the summer of 2006 lost his seat in November. I've got to think that if enough Minnesota voters see this video ad and think about it when they vote, Coleman's 46% job approval rating sure won't go up any.