With tongue planted firmly in cheek David Kahane “boasts” about the Democratic party:

We are the party of Barack Obama and the Daley Machine; the party of the Clintons and their amazing alchemistic Library, which turns Saudi dross into altruistic gold; the party of Tony Rezko and Norman Hsu; the party of vaporizing fundraisers, absconding bagmen and sitting New Mexico governors (and a recent presidential “candidate”) currently under federal investigation for allegedly steering a state contract in the direction of one of his big backers, David Rubin of CDR Financial Products in Beverly Hills. Now comes word that Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state-designate, Congress and the Emoluments Clause willing, got millions of dollars for a mall in Syracuse shortly after the developer coughed up a hundred grand for the Bill Clinton “Foundation.” That’s what I call commerce!

We are also the party of Charlie Rangel, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who’s currently under “investigation” by the House “Ethics” Committee for a myriad of dubious practices, including using campaign contributions to pay his parking tickets.

Best of all, we are the party of the ineffable Christopher Dodd (D., Countrywide), another recent “presidential candidate” who in appearance and demeanor is a throwback to the great days of Tammany mugs. It was Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who got a sweetheart mortgage deal as a “Friend of Angelo” Mozilo, the disgraced former head of Countrywide Financial; Dodd who steadfastly denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in trouble — perhaps his status as the No. 1 recipient of their campaign largesse had something to do with his unshakeable faith in them; and Dodd who has promised to release the paperwork concerning his hinky mortgages but, of course, hasn’t.

It is a lot, isn’t it? And the potential scandals aren’t trivial. Indeed if this is right, then the Richardson scandal isn’t the “Richardson pay-to-play” scandal, but the “coast-to-coast Democratic pay-to-play” scandal:

According to federal law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation, federal officials are also looking into CDR’s political and financial ties to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, as well as to Democrat state and local officials in Illinois, California, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

Now it is not as if this is a Republican conflagration of corruption. The Democrats have outlets like the Washington Post to explain that it isn’t really the Democrats’ fault; it’s all the money, you see. (Republicans will be forced to paraphrase the Second Amendment slogan: “Money doesn’t cause corruption, politicians with money do.”) But at some point the allegations will either bloom into indictments and full-fledged, unavoidable media feeding frenzies or fizzle out. If it’s the former, we’ll be back to 2006-type political scandal. We’re talking about a much more widespread and potentially serious network of bribery (that’s really what “pay-to-play” is) than anything Jack Abramoff ever cooked up.

And the Republicans? They’d be wise to make sure their own house is in order (although the benefit of being in the minority is that fewer and fewer nefarious figures have any interest in bribing you), and insist on removal of figures from leadership positions (e.g. Dodd, Rangel) until their investigations are complete. But really, this is one time when all they need to do is get out of the way — and start making those “culture of corruption” ads for 2010.

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