Bush: Democrats get the same amount of money from crooks10 Jan 2002"I got to know Ken Lay when he was head of the — what they call the Governor's Business Council in Texas. He was a supporter of Ann Richards in my run in 1994."
FACT: Mr. Lay and his wife gave Mr. Bush
three times more money than Ms. Richards in their gubernatorial contest.
14 December 2005"Abramoff — I'm frankly, not all that familiar with a lot that's going on up there on Capitol Hill. But it seems like to me that he was an equal money dispenser, that he was giving money to people in both political parties."
FACT: According to campaign finance reports, Abramoff and his clients contributed money to Democrats but
substantially more to Republicans.
Bush is trying to sell the notion that both parties are equally at fault. And he might succeed. A recent NBC poll had 72% of Americans holding that position. Which isn't that surprising when you have "reporters" like Jeffrey Birnbaum
saying things like:
"... now Abramoff was a very big Republican lobbyist but he also headed a whole lobbying shop in a law firm that included Democratic lobbyists as well and it looks like the public, so far at least, is not branding one party or the other as most responsible for this decline in the proper way of dealing with money and politics on Capitol Hill."
posted by Quiddity at 12/16/2005 09:14:00 AM
'A pox on both their houses' appears to be an easy sell at any time. Much simpler than having to know something about specific cases or to evaluate the relative severity of examples from both sides. Oh, and better for incumbent politicians, I am told, because it discourages people from 'voting the bums out'. Why bother, when the alternatives will be every bit as corrupt?
Perhaps the DLC could start working on this before the end of 2006?
VKW
They're NOT crooks! They're ... people.
It's already out that, while his clients gave to Democrats, Abrahamhocks gave NOTHING to the Dems.
Well if you equate money with corruption then you're buying into your own disenfranchisement.
The people pushing to "get money out of politics" just happen to be the same people who already have enormous amounts of political capital and don't need to explicitly spend money to push their agenda.
On the other hand, there are outsiders (like you and me) who don't have power. The only way for outsiders to effect significant political change is by getting new candidates elected. That means raising and spending money for new candidates to challenge and threaten incumbants.
And that's exactly what they're steadily criminalizing.
