Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Rightosphere Abramoff Talking Points Are Out!

Michelle Malkin via Insty. In a nutshell:

1. It's a bipartisan scandal!
and
2. This all started back when the Democrats used to do it.

Both might be true, I dunno. MM quotes the Christian Science Monitor saying that Republicans got 64% of the flithy lucre, so that does, indeed, seem to vindicate the claim. Ah, bipartisanship at last!

But you don't need me to tell you that it's more complicated than that. Apparently Republicans got 100% of the money that actually came from Abramoff, whereas Democrats merely took money from his clients. Nothing wrong with that so long as there was nothing like a quid pro quo involved, right? Still looks bad, but I expect there will be no Democratic analog of DeLay and Ney.

This is a real test for the Republican party. Will they finally start owning up to their own recent mistakes and abuse of power? If they did so there might be some chance of me voting for one of them again sometime in the next decade. My guess, however, is that it'll be dissembling and denial all the way down. I sincerely hope the GOP proves me wrong.

And P.S. what is it with that Michelle Malkin? She's beyond lightweight...more like negative weight. Why the heck is she (quasi-)famous? I don't get it.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Neither talking point is surprising since they're the same damn talking points you hear from Malkin whenever "her side" does something that looks bad.

(2) is an especially odd defense, since one of the key campaign points of the "Republican Revolution" of 1994 was that the Democrats were corrupt. But the slogan ''Although we told you to vote for us because they're corrupt and it turns out we're just as bad, may we remind you that we have "R"s next to our names and they have "D"s'' is not an especially effective rallying cry. I'm sure a quick search of "Tom Delay then and now" or similar phrases will illustrate my point (but yeah, I'm feeling lazy).

The curious thing is that I'm beginning to feel sympathetic to the view that even if you think the faces of the pigs and the humans are beginning to look alike, maybe you want some humans in there just to keep the pigs from running completely amok.

Or, more prosaically: even if they are just as bad as each other, it would be better if the Ds had at least one house of Congress, if only to keep the Rs in line. And that goes whether you're more sympathetic to what conservatism used to mean or what liberalism used to mean (those being the only viewpoints one can rationally take on anything, of course).

Re: your P.S.: she's like Rush Limbaugh, only more attractive and "ethnic." Since I don't *really* understand his appeal, I don't really understand hers, but given that he does appeal to some, hers isn't suprising.

9:11 AM  
Blogger rilkefan said...

The 64% figure is, from what I've read, spin. Jack's money went 100.00% to Rs. His clients gave some money to Ds, but he had a lot of clients and I haven't heard of their contributions to Ds being tied to corruption (defining "corrupt" by the normal standards, anyway). I expect to see a ratio of about 10:1 Rs:Ds flame out for this, and that reflects the partisanship of the JD and its reluctance to affect the balance of power too much.

7:01 PM  
Blogger Winston Smith said...

I've heard 100% of Abramoff's own contributions to Rs, but lots of his client's contributions to Ds. The latter seem not nearly so bad, but I don't know the details.

All it takes is a little D badness to screw them here by giving the two-house pox minimal plausibility.

11:29 AM  

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