Thursday, August 16, 2007

Political Pigfight: Death to the Corrupt and Evil (Young and Stevens)

TheHill.com has a heartening article about principled opposition to two of the most corrupt and evil men in Congress, Representative Don Young and Senator Ted Stevens, both Republicans from Alaska. Both of them are evil because they helped lead the fight, during the GOP's control of Congress, to maintain and increase "pork" spending, i.e. spending for special interests, such as corporate welfare and "earmarks" -- a term which means, very simply, "giving money to special interests."
I'm an active and registered Republican but these two, like are corrupt and evil in a way which makes me embarassed to admit my political affiliation these days. In fact, they would make me proud to be a Democrat instead! As Noam Schriber pointed out in The New Republic,
"When small-government conservatives abandon their principles and become big-government conservatives...scandal is a predictable result. The reason is that people ideologically predisposed to doubt the effectiveness of government don't see much practical difference between running programs in the public interest and running them as vast kickback operations, in which they spread government lucre among their favorite interest groups. If government won't work either way, you might as well make your friends happy."
To quote Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), "The Republicans didn’t do what they said they were going to do. They deserve the wrath of the voters.”

Update: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/aug/17/i75_blog_fight_over_10_million/?breaking_news

Update:
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/120274.html

Update: Ace of Spades HQ says
"When your own partisans (such as myself) are actively rooting for Republican Congressmen to be arrested, you've got a problem. Deal with the problem. Eliminate all earmarks. All of them."
He expresses my sentiments perfectly. Hat tip: Instapundit.

Update: Fred Barnes in the WSJ says "the road to political recovery...for Republicans is to stop acting like, well, Republicans--that is, Republicans of recent vintage." Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan, who gives Barnes the Yglesias Award for Political Honesty!