Posted on 02/13/2006 6:03:15 PM PST by Libloather
Democrats add a new C to corruption
By Josephine Hearn
As Democrats mull when and how to introduce an election-year agenda, some party leaders have already begun to broaden the now-familiar Democratic refrain of a “culture of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and cover-up” to add a new alliterative element: costs.
The shift in language reflects some frustration among Democrats that their steady drumbeat on corruption isn’t connecting with voters as much as they’d like.
The new phrase allows them to segue from ethical abuses to pocketbook issues such as prescriptions drugs, energy prices and tuition costs, where they contend that Republicans have fallen under the sway of industry lobbyists and rewarded special interests to the detriment of average voters.
“There is a very focused determination [to] educate the public … that this isn’t just some inside-the-Beltway thing but that it has a direct relationship to their lives,” a House Democratic leadership aide said. “I think we’ve recognized the need to do this for a while, but we are clearly now making the very aggressive transition.”
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), began talking about the “costs of corruption” in December. House Democrats embraced it in January, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) came aboard earlier this month, according to a search of the Lexis-Nexis news database.
“The culture of corruption in Washington, D.C., has a cost to the American people,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) intoned earlier this month. “We’ll stop the cost of corruption to the American people, whether it is in home heating oil, gas prices or in the price of prescription drugs.”
A poll done in late January by Democracy Corps, a nonprofit organization associated with Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, which does internal polling for the DCCC, found that only 44 percent of likely voters thought corruption in Washington was a very serious problem and that only 29 percent were very concerned about Abramoff’s dealings with elected officials. But when pollsters linked corruption to prescription-drug costs, gas prices or the cost of home heating oil, 66 percent or more of respondents were very or extremely upset.
“What bothers people the most about corruption is not the fouling of the process but the impact on real things — energy prices, the Iraq war and Medicare reform. Those are ‘facts’ that upset people the most,” Democracy Corps principals Stan Greenberg and James Carville wrote in a Jan. 31 memo to supporters. “The corruption scandal is all about energy, Iraq, and the prescription drug mess — the dominant issues for the public.”
Democratic strategists say the new phrase helps combine two aspects of their message: Republican corruption and the squeeze on the middle class.
“It is one phrase that encapsulates the general feeling, something that describes what corruption means and how it affects people,” said a Democratic strategist who works on developing messages.
A spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, however, argued that Democrats have made their own ethical missteps.
“Democrats have one major obstacle in their way, and that’s the culture of hypocrisy that pervades the Democrat Party from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to [Rep.] William Jefferson [D-La.],” the spokesman said, alluding to recent media reports about Reid’s contacts with associates of indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the fact that Jefferson is the target of an FBI sting.
In recent months Democrats have been test-driving different parts of their election-year message. Last fall they began using the slogan “We can do better” to frame the 2006 elections as a referendum on Republican-controlled government.
Giving the Democrats’ official response after the president’s State of the Union address earlier this year, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine repeatedly stressed that “There is a better way.”
Democrats and their allies will begin stepping up their discussion of the price of corruption in coming weeks.
Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), ranking Democrat on the House Rules Committee, is working on a report called “America for Sale: The Cost of Corruption” that is expected to draw ties between Republicans’ harsh parliamentary tactics and perceived shortcomings in recently passed bills, such as the 2003 prescription-drug measure. Democrats complain that the act does not allow the Medicare program to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices.
The Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal advocacy group, will feature “cost of corruption” in one of its issue campaigns, focusing on recent budget cuts to student loans and on higher gas and drug prices, a spokesman said.
The group tied ethical lapses to pocketbook issues in an ad campaign last month targeting Reps. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and has plans to buy more ads elaborating on the same theme, as well as to hold news conferences and issue reports.
“We’re connecting the dots for everyday people who are paying a price for this corruption at the pharmacy and the pump,” affirmed the spokesman, Toby Chaudhuri. “The corrupt policies that got us into this fix are not going to get us out.”
you know and I know illegals come by air, ship, across both land borders, but the bulk come across at the southern border. and that is a fact. I am constantly told I know nothing by politicians who love to lie, and twist their rears to fit their lack of a spine. I do not like to point out facts, but we are already under attack from the south. If you doubt me, check with the southern border patrol, and the police departments along the border, before you tell me I haven't the facts. Yes we do have illegals entering from the Canada side, but they are a small portion considering the numbers coming from the southern side. Now it only took 19 person on 9-11, but when one adds up the murders from the illegals coming across the southern border one quickly finds there is a 9-11 every year perpetrated by those coming from the southern border. And that FRiend is the facts. Believe it or not!!!
Facts? You can't handle the facts! All you want to do is yammer about your johnny one note hobby horse and ignore all else; n00b.
You can find plenty of other threads to do that on here, so stop hijacking this thread and perverting it, to suit your own wee agenda!
sorry you feel that way...bye
This has nothing at all to do with "feelings"; it has to do with the fact that you tried to break FR's posting rules, tried to pervert/hijack this thread, and are just a johnny one note.
but this johnny one note is about to press the abuse button.
I've attempted to be reasonable with you, but you seem intent on a fight. I don't fight, I state facts. Sorry!!
But, before you do so, remember that you need a reason; a REAL reason to claim "abuse". You have none.
I broke no posting rule.
I did not bait nor flame you.
I did not attack you; personally or any other way.
I did not use foul language.
Nor, unlike you, did I attempt to hijack this thread.
Hey..........we DEBATE here; last time I looked, that wasn't "fighting".
sorry you are wrong about the debate part, we are here to advance a conservative agenda, not debate.
YOU are being ridiculous
LOL
Yes I am laughing at you.
But they are educating the public:
To vote against them again!
LOL...that's okay, you may do so. I don't even want to know why...LOL
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