The Republican Rot
A party caught in the deep sleaze
by Alan Bisbort - January 12, 2006
The serial episodes of America´s most famous crime family?
The World This Week
The new year was barely hours old when the first Republican criminals were led away in handcuffs. "Duke" Cunningham, a nine-term congressman from California, pled guilty to taking $2.4 million in kickbacks for Congressional favors rendered; that is, his vote was, literally, for sale ($2.4 million is his admitted price; the actual total was likely much higher). While the Duke may be the Pete Rose of corrupt GOP legislators -- leading in career hits off the Bribery Bong -- he's not alone. He's also not going gently into that good penal night. It turns out that, in the weeks prior to his plea, he was outfitted with a wire -- a comical image straight from one of those Mob turncoat movie scenes -- and now many of his former GOP playmates are quivering in their Guccis waiting for that special knock at the door.
In the same fateful week, Jack Abramoff, a longtime Republican lobbyist also pled guilty to, well, the short version: for being the sleaziest guy in the sleazy K Street pond. Even the lapdog mainstream media -- fast becoming the fringe media -- called it "The biggest corruption scandal to infect Congress in a generation." Dandy Jack is now singing like Celine Dion to prosecutors in order to soften his penal landing. Abramoff was, among other things, the bag man for Tom DeLay's money-laundering and influence-peddling scheme. He was friends with everyone, including Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition and now a GOP lobbyist (Christ and Mammon all in one package!) and Grover Norquist, the man behind the neoconservative takeover in D.C.
The new year's opening flurry has blurred the memory banks. Was it only last fall that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald indicted Dick Cheney's right hand man, Lewis Libby, and left open the possibility of indictments against Cheney and Karl Rove? Any day now, either or both of these GOP leading lights could be forced to resign and, saints be praised, led away in handcuffs. Jostle a bit further into the recesses of the GOP closet and you find Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, under investigation for insider trading, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, forced to step down while Ronnie Earle's investigation tightens the rope around his neck. It's getting so that you need a computer program just to keep up with the Republican corruption scandals.
This explains why the GOP is so desperate to stack the Supreme Court deck with their goombas. If you think it's bad now, just wait until Sam Alito gets the special handshake and becomes a "made man" in the GOPrano Crime Family. He's not only on the record as wanting to overturn Roe v. Wade , he's in favor of even more power for the White House. If he gets on the court, all three branches will be in Bush control and he'll have carte blanche to screw us royally (emphasis on "royally") without ever having to face the legal consequences. As Daily Kos put it, "The Republican Party isn't mired in scandal, it IS the scandal -- the system of bribery, kickbacks, and scams that fuel its massive money machine and influence-peddling racket É Ten years. That's all it took for Republicans to go from outsider reformers to the most corrupt machine in recent history and perhaps ever (the historians can debate that point)."
http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:139562
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