McCain and Keating - Dems shooting themselves in the foot.
From comments in Belmont Club Blog:
Obama’s dragging out the Keating 5 scandal will have three effects:
1. Really energize McCain to beat Obama publicly.
2. Expose the long term Democratic culture of corruption.
3. Really piss off everyone, especially in Ohio, who admires John Glenn.
This may prove to be a classic shot in the foot. Democrats used the Home Mortgage Industry for decades as a piggy bank. Twenty years ago Dennis Deconcini a Democrat and Senior Senator from Arizona brought along the Junior Senator to a meeting. Here is the money passage from the wiki on “Keating Five” and yes I know it is the unreliable wiki:
DeConcini began the meeting by saying, “We wanted to meet with you because we have determined that potential actions of yours could injure a constituent.”[13] McCain said, “One of our jobs as elected officials is to help constituents in a proper fashion. ACC [American Continental Corporation] is a big employer and important to the local economy. I wouldn’t want any special favors for them…. I don’t want any part of our conversation to be improper.” Glenn said, “To be blunt, you should charge them or get off their backs,” while DeConcini said, “What’s wrong with this if they’re willing to clean up their act? … It’s very unusual for us to have a company that could be put out of business by its regulators.”[7] The regulators then revealed that Lincoln was under criminal investigation on a variety of serious charges, at which point McCain severed all relations with Keating.[7] Glenn continued to help Keating after that revelation, by setting up a meeting with then-House Majority Leader Jim Wright, which turned out to be the only questionable thing Glenn did throughout the whole affair.[14]
So three corrupt Democrats self destruct for a felonious mortgage broker. On the way they try to drag in one clueless but respectable old Democrat and one Republican. The former sends the crook to talk to another politician and the Republican walks out of the trap and devotes the next 19 years to fighting the corruption. The Democrats learn nothing and repeat the entire exercise on a vastly larger scale.
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2008/10/07/attack-at-dawn/#more-396