Rove’s advice just got trickier

July 31, 2007

Following up on Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R-Alaska) bribery scandal for a moment, Michael Crowley had a good item connecting the story to Karl Rove’s recent advice for Republican congressional candidates. As Bush’s svengali told them, ’08 can still be a great year for the GOP, because the Culture of Corruption will be long gone.

Karl Rove, President Bush’s political lieutenant, told a closed-door meeting of 2008 Republican House candidates and their aides Tuesday that it was less the war in Iraq than corruption in Congress that caused their party’s defeat in the 2006 elections.

Rove’s clear advice to the candidates is to distance themselves from the culture of Washington. Specifically, Republican candidates are urged to make clear they have no connection with disgraced congressmen such as Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley.

In effect, Rove was rebutting the complaint inside the party that George W. Bush is responsible for Republican miseries by invading Iraq.

Now, Rove’s advice is pretty silly on its face. The war in Iraq was almost certainly the driving factor in 2006, and unfortunately it will be again in 2008.

But even if we accept Rove’s mistaken assessment, if Republican corruption helped Dems achieve a historic victory last year, the GOP should be in a near-panic about next year.

In Alaska, Ted Stevens is obviously in a world of hurt right now, and smart money says he’ll be forced to resign from office in disgrace before the end of the 110th Congress. But Stevens is hardly an aberration.

The way Representative John T. Doolittle has been talking about it back home in California, his indictment on federal corruption charges is only a matter of time.

Mr. Doolittle acknowledges that the Justice Department pressed him this spring to accept a plea bargain and confess to criminal charges involving his relationship with the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff; he says he refused the deal. His public relations situation has become so desperate that he and his wife, Julie, went on a local talk-radio show in Sacramento several weeks ago to describe, in detail, the four-hour F.B.I. raid that was carried out in April on their Virginia home.

Mr. Doolittle, a former member of the House Republican leadership, said the raid was an effort to coerce him to “admit to a crime that I did not commit.”

Among members of Congress, Mr. Doolittle is far from alone in feeling heat from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department. More than a dozen current and former lawmakers are under scrutiny in cases involving their work on Capitol Hill.

What’s particularly interesting about this, historically, is that the Republicans’ Culture of Corruption is so broad. In previous generations, there would be one scandal that took down a bunch of lawmakers. Now, there are a variety of scandals, all happening at the exact same time.

For those keeping score at home, here’s the list:

Former Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) — currently in prison
Former Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) — currently under investigation
Former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) — currently under indictment
Former Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) — currently under investigation
Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) — currently under investigation
Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) — currently under investigation*
Former Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.) — currently in prison
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) — currently under investigation
Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) — currently under indictment
Rep. Allan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) — currently under investigation
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) — currently under investigation*
Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) — currently under investigation
Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) — currently under investigation
Former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) — currently under investigation
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) — likely to soon be under investigation

* denotes recently having had their property raided by federal law-enforcement officials

Following Rove’s reasoning, if Iraq doesn’t hurt the GOP politically, these guys will.

“Rove’s clear advice to the candidates is to distance themselves from the culture of Washington.”

i hate to break this to karl, but the republicans ARE that culture, so how can they distance themselves from it?

  • Alaska has three senators?? I didn’t know the oil lobby was THAT strong.

    CB, Don Young is a corrupt Congressman, not a corrupt senator.

  • The K Street project represents the institutionalization of corruption by Republicans, literally a one-stop, in-house, influence-peddling market.

    With any luck and a little decent campaigning, this will be one of the many millstones around the necks of the Republicans, leading to the 2008 Republican mass extinction event.

  • CB, Don Young is a corrupt Congressman, not a corrupt senator.

    Oops. Fixed.

  • Someone should start a rumor that Karl Rove is actually a sleeper agent for the Democratic Party. After all, he’s done more damge to the GOP in six years than a THOUSAND TOM DELAYS, FOUR THOUSAND DUKE CUNNINGHAMS, AND AN ALASKA-LOAD OF TED STEVENSES could do in a century.

    “Paging Mr. Rove—Mr. Karl Rove. Your Cadillac full of unmarked American currency from the DNC has just arrived….”

  • With Jefferson and Mollohan listed, only two of out 15 are Democrats. Even with the scale tilted to the Republicans, the Rethugs will try to paint the scandals as a non-partisan problem. Lying bastards.

  • How could you forget Curt Weldon? The grand jury has been investigating him for more than a year.

    My dark horse pick is the longest-serving member of the House, Rep. C. W. “Bill” Young (R-FL). Young’s daughter-in-law, Cynthia Young, is a partner in the Media PA-based two-man lobbbying firm, Grimes & Young. The Grimes is Cecelia Grimes, a fortyish, attractive blonde real estate agent who supposedly met Curt Weldon when she coached his kid and sold him his house.

    Grimes and Young both contributed to Rep. Robert Andrews on the same day in 9/04 as execs of defense contractor, Galaxy Scientific. Ask yourself if a defense contractor would normally allow execs to be lobbyists.

  • How do these Repubs distance themselves?…
    Smear more Democrats with innuendo of corruption, act victimized by Democrats when corruption is even mentioned. cover up and stall or impede any investigations of republicans.

    Unfortunately they must remain completely silent in the presence of Vitter. Just do what his prostitutes did, let him finish first.

    Rove should focus not only on distancing from the “Culture of Corruption” but also from being known as “the Party of Hypocrisy”
    He doesn’t mention values or integrity or more oversight or accountability but only on not being seen as a corrupt culture. Just pathetic.

  • A question, though: If US Attorneys were fired for not frivolously investigating Democrats for voter fraud just before elections, we can assume that there is political pressure attached to investigations of politicians. Why, then, would the Bush Administration allow their allies to be treated this way?

  • The war in Iraq was almost certainly the driving factor in 2006, and unfortunately it will be again in 2008.

    When are there insurgents going to get around to crafting a Former Dan-style reworking of Heart of Stone to sing within audible distance of our troops: “I don’t believe you’ve got unlimited resources…”?

  • What happened to the FBI investigaton of Arlen Specter’s senior staffer, Vicki Siegel Herson in connection with $50 million of Specter earmarks that benefited her lobbyist husband, Michael Herson’s clients?

  • Specifically, Republican candidates are urged to make clear they have no connection with disgraced congressmen such as Duke Cunningham and Mark Foley.

    So his sage advice is to remind people of Duke and Maf54. Oh yes please, bring it up as often as possible. “Hey, just because we’ve had a few crooks and pervs in our ranks doesn’t mean I’m a perv or a crook!”

    Thanks Karl, but I think Steve @ # 7 just blew your cover.

  • CB,

    As has been pointed out, Sen. Vitter is missing from your list, but so is former Representative Foley!

  • Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) — likely to soon be under investigation

    What for? She’s totally selling that land back for exactly what she paid for it. Just as a bank robber giving back every stolen cent undoes the crime, returning the land will absolve Lisa, too.

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