This so often repeated foolishness is the wishful thinking of cretins who still believe in the "Republican Party".
Sure, any Member of Congress with any sort of power has compiled a stack of blackmailable misdeeds, sexual, intoxication-related, or bribe taking.
But it's much more probable that, since they all come from the same social class, all go to the same schools, all are trained the same way, all marry the same women, all share the same girlfriends or boyfriends, and all are offered wealth far, far beyond their native ability to create, that they (your "key Republican leaders") are true believers in the dominant paradigm - that the time for self-government is over, that the voters are idiots who deserve to be screwed over, and that the only security for themselves and their families is to be enthusiastic soldiers in the New World Order, even if they need (mercifully brief) periods of concealment around election time.
Kind of like British members of parliament.
i wish people understood that this is always the endgame for a democracy/republic. Nazi Germany came into existence legally and constitutionally. when Hitler failed with his Munich Beer Hall Putsch, he contemplated suicide thinking himself a failure. he was talked out of it. he then set about destroying the Weimar Republic from the inside, by getting Nazis elected to the Reichstag in enough numbers to change the constitution. when the time came, the German people gladly voted to replace their democracy with a dictatorship.
this is what the democRATS are doing here, now. they are every bit the radicals that the Nazis were and they’ve followed Hitler’s example ever since the 1968 democRAT convention riots went badly for them (it was their Munich Beer Hall Putsch). i wish people could see the clear parallels, but most people are not students of history.
Self-deluded true believers at that. But right on the money, even as they point to "the vote" and claim that the vote, without more, is sufficient basis for finding "self government."