In almost every cycle, party leaders from both sides try to keep retirements in Congress to an absolute minimum. Leaders realize that there’s a 97% re-election rate for incumbents and fewer competitive districts nationwide, so keeping members running usually gives the parties one less seat to worry about.<\/p>\n
That is, of course, unless incumbents are suspected of widespread corruption. When that’s the case, there’s not only talk about retirements, there are discussions about resignations<\/a>.<\/p>\n As the Abramoff-Scanlon lobbying scandal unfolds with greater speed, congressional Republican advisers are urging leadership officials to call on those linked to it to consider resigning long before the 2006 midterm elections.<\/p>\n “They should step aside now,” said one adviser with ties to the House Republican leadership and the White House. “If they leave now, we could still hold their seat.”<\/p>\n GOP officials are worried that the lobbying affair could include more than a dozen lawmakers and potentially spell disaster for the Republican majority in the House. Political strategists said that if members suspected in it leave early enough, they won’t become issues in the fall 2006 election.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Apparently, the idea is making the rounds. None other than \u00fcber-activist Grover Norquist told Newsweek<\/a> that Ohio Rep. Bob Ney (R), who was recently told by prosecutors that he may soon may face bribery charges<\/a>, should “step aside for the good of the team.”<\/p>\n I suppose it’s not a ridiculous strategy. If soon-to-be indicted lawmakers leave Congress almost a year before the midterm elections, Republicans would have a chance to get a fresh face on the ballot before voters head to the polls. It might give the party a better chance to keep the seat and give Dems’ charges about the GOP “culture of corruption” less weight.<\/p>\n On the other hand, how would it look if scandal-plagued Republicans started resigning from Congress en masse? Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In almost every cycle, party leaders from both sides try to keep retirements in Congress to an absolute minimum. Leaders realize that there’s a 97% re-election rate for incumbents and fewer competitive districts nationwide, so keeping members running usually gives the parties one less seat to worry about. That is, of course, unless incumbents are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}