My dad, a diehard Republican, declared today that he’s voting Obama.  Ted Stevens was the straw that broke that camel’s back.  Of course, here in Mississippi our own Evil Republican governor just released the man convicted of one of the most notorious murders in Gulf Coast history.

Yeah, we underwent some scandal fatigue back in 1994 after wave upon wave of “Democrats are corrupt” stories bombarded the news.  Guess what happened that November?  It takes some series brass balls to claim that the most powerful GOoPer in the Senate picking up 7 indictments over what are effectively bribes will be good for the Republicans in the fall.

That said, this is the Bush DOJ ordering down these indictments, so I have no trouble believing that the investigation will be handled so ham-handedly that Stevens gets to walk away clean before election day.  If anything, I can see this getting ginned up as a tool to accuse Democrats of criminalizing politics.  Then Stevens can hide in the cocoon of Double Jeopardy protection so that an Obama administration can’t touch him.

Bushies are nothing if not masterful at gaming the system.

I don’t know if the Bushies will go out to protect Senator Bridge to Nowhere.  It’s not like he does a damn thing for them.  If anything I think they will let him hang so they can sneak in some pardons for their real friends (Rover to name a big one).

In all truth its a really weak connection. McCain personally really, really hates Stevens.

I’m more pissed that the Democratic Senator from Hawaii is defending this scumbag. Do the non-mainland states have some kind of brotherhood or something?

Assuming that Senator Stevens is actually guilty, why would an 84 year old man, a power in Alaskan politics since before statehood, do something like this?

Because he’s been doing it for decades, and this is the first time he got sloppy enough to get caught.  I suppose it’s theoretically possible that he was an honest politician until the past few years, but that seems incredibly unlikely unless it comes out that he has dementia of some kind.

“Do the non-mainland states have some kind of brotherhood or something?”

They’re going batshit crazy out there; the suspense of waiting for their State Quarters to be released is killing them.

I’m more pissed that the Democratic Senator from Hawaii is defending this scumbag. Do the non-mainland states have some kind of brotherhood or something?

When one of the Hawaiian Daniels was very ill, Stevens sat by his bedside. I assume it’s the same one.

Ben: Actually, yes, I would not be surprised if the non-mainland states DID have some kind of kinship; remember that Alaska and Hawaii got statehood around the same time—within years of one another—and that Senator Inouye has been in there forever as well. Not sure if he’s been there since statehood, but damn near.

Dan Inouye shares Ted Stevens’ love of pork, too; remember a few years back when he snuck a couple mil for French-Israeli schools, as a completely random example.

I just read an article from 2006 that talks about how Tom Coburn and Barack Obama (!) went up against the Alaska and Hawaii Senators on pork. So apparently, they do stick together.

I really hate William Jefferson.  In twenty years, reichwingers will still be dropping his name every time a Repub gets caught molesting little boys or throwing hookers and blow parties or taking bribes or whatever.

One crooked Dem = infinity crooked Repugs.

Dana, no one in their right mind would argue that any political party is an absolute paragon of virtue. Democrats can be corrupt to. The difference is that it has become such an entrenched part of the culture in certain sections of the republican apparatus that it stops looking like individual bad acts and starts looking like a systematic problem.

Look, everyone.  Dana knows of some Democrats who have done bad stuff.  I guess that means Ted Stevens is less guilty of fraud now.

The difference between Republican and Democratic corruption is that no one *joins* the party of “the little guy” in order to get huge, expensive kickbacks from supporters. Power corrupts everyone, but there’s a difference between the people who signed on to “the party of the people” and the ones who signed onto “the party of big business”. In other words, for Democrats, corruption is a bug; for Republicans, it’s a feature.

Lest you don’t believe me, Democrats were in control of the House for 30-odd years, got thrown out for corruption, and yet had *never* managed to reach the level of corruption that the Republicans in the House achieved in just 12 years of dominance. And these were guys who had been largely *elected* to be reformers!

I believe very strongly in the Republican party. I believe that its desire to suck at the teat of corrupt government informs its desire to make sure no one else gets to do so, and its desire to use raw power as a hammer to remake the world in a self-serving image informs its desire to prevent others from doing so. So it makes a great watchdog party—too good, in fact. The party that actually believes people are good and government can help them should always be in charge of government, and the party that believes people are evil and government is useless at best should always be in charge of yapping at them every time they do something wrong, but never having the power to actually do anything themselves. This would be the most effective check on corruption and government waste we could have—a permanent Democratic majority with a strong Republican minority.

Of course, right now I just want to crush the bastards, but that’s after years of them fucking this country over hardcore. In the long run we need the Republicans to keep us honest. However, since we’re more inherently honest ourselves than they are, they’re much better at ferreting out and reacting to our corruption than we are to theirs, they are always going to be corrupted by power very very quickly and with little opposition, so we can’t ever let them get more than they need to keep our bad actors in check. And since we don’t have as many as they do, that’s not a lot.

Dana, if you still have no idea why on earth we think Republican corruption is different than Democratic corruption, try reading “Welcome to the Machine.”

There’s a difference between paying a hooker and setting up an entire infrastructure that financially benefits your party.