WP advice: GOP not learning from Dems, but Dems should learn from GOP

[highplainsdem]

Okay, that isn't the headline of the story, but this isn't LBN so I don't have to post the exact headline as the subject. The story is at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/28/AR2005092801973_2.html

The first part of this Talking Points column by Terry M. Neal -- "GOP Ignores Lessons of Democrats' Past Mistakes" -- is about DeLay and other Republicans making the mistake of using the "time-honored" defense that the criminal charges are just a partisan attack by political enemies:

Buried under a sea of political scandal in the late 1980s and early 1990s, congressional Democrats often evoked the same defense. And it didn't work.

<snip>

The reason was simple: It is entirely possible both that your enemies are out to get you and that you did exactly what you are being accused of doing. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive.


But it's the second part of the article, page 2, that I found especially interesting. Neal quotes Pelosi's wonderful "culture of corruption" statement, but says that when he tried to get a top Democratic congressional staffer to talk about this, the staffer was "skittish" and wouldn't go on the record.

Contrast the Democrats' tepid approach to that of the Republicans of the late 1980s and early 1990s. You could hardly turn on C-Span back then without seeing a pudgy, white-haired back-bencher from Georgia by the name of Newt Gingrich inveighing against the rampant corruption and arrogance of the Democratic party.

True enough, there are Democrats in Congress today with their own ethics problems, complicating efforts to tag the GOP as the party of low standards. But the same was true of the Republicans when they were in the minority party, and that didn't stop them from pressing their case against the Democrats. The bottom line is leaders are always held to a higher standard than back-benchers.

I think this is a great point Neal made.

[DemNoir]

1. What worries me

The Republicans seems totally unfazed about their plummenting poll numbers. No matter what happens, they never change course,not even slighty.

What do they know? What tricks might they have up their dirty sleeves?