The Day After 50

IN THE SPECIAL election held yesterday to fill the seat in the House of Representatives vacated by the disgraced Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the Republican won by 50 percent to 45 percent. According to Robert Tanner:

With 90 percent of precincts reporting, [Republican] Bilbray had 56,130 votes, or 50 percent. [Democrat] Busby trailed with 51,292 votes, or 45 percent.

It’s not a famous victory but it is good enough that the Today Show did not feel the need to report on it. Whereas, if it had been closer, say 49 percent to 48 percent, or a Democrat victory, then we would be hearing all about it. We would be told that the election showed that it is all over for Bush and for evil Republicans.

After a horrendous winter and spring, this result is a big shot in the arm for Republicans.

Maybe there is a lesson here for Democrats and their “culture of corruption” campaign. It’s interesting that the two Republican embarrassments were swiftly dealt with and swept away. The Democrats got what they wanted with Tom DeLay. His battles with the Democratic prosecutor in Democratic Austin, Texas, made him a liability, and so he stepped down as Majority Leader, and now is not running for reelection. Randy Cunningham was in the news one day, pleading guilty, in the news another day, being sentenced, and now his seat is back in Republican hands.

Hey, those bumbling Republicans can sometimes really hit their marks.

But look at the Democratic embarrassments: Representatives Cynthia McKinney and William Jefferson. McKinney suffers from a terminal case of “Do You Know Who I Am?” and was unwilling to go quietly when properly stopped by a Capitol Hill policeman for not showing her badge at a security checkpoint. And William Jefferson is playing hard to get in the investigation of his alleged bribery.

A similar situation obtains with the unfolding Fannie Mae investigation. As Jim Gerahty writes, it was a Clinton appointee, Franklin Raines, Chairman of the Federal National Mortgage Association, who was responsible for the $10.6 billion overstatement of earnings. But instead of going quietly he tried to block the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) investigation. And he had friends, Democratic friends, on Capitol Hill. The report from OFHEO said that

By deliberately manipulating accounting to hit earnings targets, senior management maximized the bonuses and other compensation they received, at the expense of shareholders. The manipulation contributed significantly to the compensation of former chairman and chief executive Franklin Raines, which totaled more than $90 million from 1998 to 2003 - including some $52 million directly tied to hitting earnings targets.

What do they say about corporate greed? Writes Gerahty:

Let’s recall that the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate had such a close relationship with Raines that he was ready to make him Treasury Secretary.

Raines finally resigned from Fannie Mae in 2004. But no perp walk yet.

Oh, and guess who the Vice Chairman was at Fannie Mae until she quit in 2002? Jamie Gorelick. Yes, that Jamie Gorelick, the author of the wall between domestic and foreign intelligence which stopped the Feds from connecting the dots before 9/11.

So which was worse? Enron or Fannie Mae? And why haven’t we heard outraged Democrats or populist journalists raging about the corporate fat cats putting Fannie Mae’s widows-and-orphans mortgage bonds at risk?

Why is it that we all felt shame and outrage about Randy Cunningham bribery conviction, but not about William Jefferson alleged malfeasance?

There’s a culture problem here for the Democrats. They just don’t believe that they have to follow the rules. And nobody is surprised, or even outraged, when they don’t.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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