The Real Culture Of Corruption

Pete Wehner:

These people strike me as hermetically sealed off from how most of the rest of the country view this subject. As these backroom deals become more and more widely known, anger will swell up among voters. It is bad enough to jam through a bill on a strict party-line-vote against overwhelming opposition from the public; for it to have happened only because various Members of Congress were (legally) bribed will magnify the intensity of the opposition. And for politicians to take such obvious pride in the pay-off will make things even worse. The populist, anti-Washington wave out there, which is already quite large, will only grow, and grow, and grow.

They do seem to be completely tone deaf to how sane people view this. And I hope that there’s a terrible retribution for them at the polls next fall.

6 thoughts on “The Real Culture Of Corruption”

  1. Any “terrible retribution” won’t happen unless the Republicans offer a credible alternative. With respect to the health care issue, they’ve been pretty good at *opposing* the current ObamaCare bill, but their proposed alternative is just “socialism lite”.

    That’s why many Tea Party types are disenchanted with both major political parties.

    The right ideas are out there. Some of the recent John Stossel specials on Fox show that Americans are interested in hearing them and having them be part of the political debate.

    But if the R’s choose not to challenge the D’s on fundamental issues of individual rights, laissez-faire capitalism, government control of the economy, then we may just see more of the same for the next 3-7 years.

    Personally, I’m not holding my breath waiting for the R’s to come around. (This should not be construed as an endorsement of any of the minor parties.)

  2. Get used to it, guys. We’ve slipped into the English system of government where one party consistently votes against any measure proposed by the other. In the House, that means it takes most of the Democrats (218) to pass a bill — which is nothing new. But in the Senate, where everything can be stalled indefinitely by filibuster unless there’s 60 votes to kill the filibuster, its going to take 60 solid Democrats to pass a resolution saying Motherhood Is Kind-A-Nice. So, with only 60 Democrats in the Senate, there’s a lot of horsetrading to ensure that solid 60 bloc.

    Of course it’s exceptionally rare for any party to have as many as 60 senators at a time. Wait till the Dems fall to 57 or 58 senators and really need to slip sweeteners to a few apostate Republicans to pass anything meaningful. The bribes are probably going to be pretty blatant!

    And no, a year off, or 3 years off, or 5 years, or whenever the Republicans discover they have a majority in the Senate, the wonderful old tradition of bipartisanship in that august body will NOT be magically reborn. The Republicans have been really good teachers about the political value of obstructionism and Democrats have learned their lesson.

    And where it ends, I do not know, unless a Ceasar is in the offing. Which is sad, but… any nation without a working government is going to get one eventuallly.

  3. The Republicans have been really good teachers about the political value of obstructionism and Democrats have learned their lesson.

    You haven’t been on this planet very long, have you?

  4. Wait till the Dems fall to 57 or 58 senators and really need to slip sweeteners to a few apostate Republicans to pass anything meaningful. The bribes are probably going to be pretty blatant!

    Compared to what?

Comments are closed.