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sofa king

(10,857 posts)
3. It's a long ways away, though.
Fri Feb 22, 2013, 05:16 PM
Feb 2013

I think all we can say for (nearly) certain is that at least two prurient scandals will rock the Senate before the election (it happens every year, now). The political landscape will certainly change by then in some unpredictable way.

But we can make some predictions. Those scandals which we can now practically depend on will lean predominantly Republican because Republicans lean predominantly toward corruption.

The Democratic Party will have a massive investigative advantage because it controls the Senate and President Obama, now in his second term, is no longer prevented from pursuing prosecutions of Bush-era malfeasances. For example, the Department of Justice can now dust off the two years' worth of writings by Jack Abramoff, provided to the FBI during the Bush years, and run down every Senator remaining in Congress who participated in Abramoff's enormous crime-net, with the cooperation of the Senate Ethics mechanisms. In the meantime, it's all Rep. Issa can do to keep the lid on his own corrupt leadership in the House. He can't defend his fellow Senators.

The ultimate object is a net five pickups. I guarantee you there are five Republican Senators sitting on scandals that can take them completely out of the running before November, 2014, if the Democrats choose to go that route. From a law enforcement perspective, some of those investigations must be pursued because they touch on espionage and international terrorism, and they probably kicked off in January. Whether they will ever be publicly acknowledged depends on whether the Dems think they can clean house without the Republicans resorting to... extralegal means, as they are wont to do.

It's a dangerous game to play, because criminals don't have to play by the rules, but it's one I think we could win.

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