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Tuesday, January 10, 2006

I Like It

Mark Schmidt wants to reframe the "lobbying scandal." Step one: Don't call it a "lobbying scandal"
That's the other side's frame. This is not a lobbying scandal. It's a betrayal-of-public-trust scandal. Lobbyists have no power, no influence, until a public servant gives them power. That's what DeLay and the K Street Project was all about. What they did was to set up a system by which lobbyists who proved their loyalty in various ways, such as taking DeLay and Ney on golf trips to Scotland, could be transformed from supplicants to full partners in government.

"Betrayal-of-the-public-trust scandal" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. But the sentiment is right. Abramoff is a very sleazy guy, no question. But he only got to where he was because members of congress--people who are elected to serve the people--let them in the back door, front door, side door, and open windows. At the end of the day, this isn't about lobbyists. Lobbying is not even all that bad, intrinsically (as has been noted before, it's even a constitutionally guaranteed right). It's about congressmen abusing their position of power to get enriched by said lobbyists. It's the congressmen who need to go down. The lobbyists are just prosecution witnesses.

Link via Kevin Drum.

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