CULTURE OF CORRUPTION INFECTS REPUBLICAN CONGRESS

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Opinion Cynthia Tucker

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION INFECTS REPUBLICAN CONGRESS
Sat Oct 7, 8:03 PM ET

If a GOP-controlled Congress loses in November because its leaders failed to rein in a sexual predator, so be it. But that's hardly the worst crime this bunch has perpetrated against the country.


They have cut taxes for the wealthy while also handing out new entitlements, ensuring that the current crop of kindergartners will struggle to pay off the debt. They have siphoned off billions in tax dollars for countless "earmarked" pork-barrel projects for favored members.

They have enthusiastically joined the White House in fear-mongering and painting their critics as unpatriotic. They have pandered to the worst instincts of reactionaries, bashing illegal immigrants and demonizing gays.

Giddy with power, a Republican Congress has allowed a festering culture of corruption that led to the excesses of Tom DeLay, Bob Ney and Duke Cunningham. And worst of all, it has been complicit in the lies that the White House spread to defend its misbegotten war in Iraq.

Congressional Republicans had intended to spend the next month repeating the same storyline they've relied on since 9/11: Democrats are unpatriotic whiners who cannot be trusted to defend the country. (Heaven knows, inept Democrats, lacking a coherent policy to thwart Islamist jihadists, have allowed that storyline to dominate previous election campaigns.) But the GOP finds itself suddenly thrown off stride by accusations that House Speaker Dennis Hastert and others failed to protect 16-year-old pages from the illicit attentions of former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record). .......