Rich Lowry on Talking Points & the "Culture of Corruption"
Rich Lowry proving he's much more in tune with reality than most Republican bloggers. At the same time, however, notice how free and easy Lowry is with the truth after an election than he ever was before it.
The "culture of corruption" was real. That phrase was a much-contested talking point during the past two years, with Democrats touting it as an accurate description of the degraded ethical state of the congressional GOP and Republicans dismissing it as a smear. Democrats were much closer to the truth. Voters took a good whiff of the odor emanating from Washington and some of their Republican representatives, and recoiled. One-third of Republican losses in the House came in congressional districts where the party had been tainted, to varying degrees, by scandal....
The culture of corruption was really a culture of looking the other way, delaying action and hoping no one would notice. The first step on the slide toward oblivion was the decision of the House Republican conference right after the 2004 elections to reverse a rule that said members of its leadership had to step aside if indicted. This move was meant to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay from a bogus indictment in Texas, but it played as a special favor for a powerful player and was unsustainable. Republicans changed the rule back. But the culture-of-corruption theme had been set, and Republicans would play into it right up to Election Day.
The phrase "culture of corruption" indeed may strike one as a talking point of sorts. But when it's just flat-out true to any onlooker of the obvious, it also rises above even the status of "Conventional Wisdom." Truth can certainly be used as a talking point. Unfortunately, what some of the GOP denialists don't seem to grasp is that so do lies and distortions. That some continue to deny the uniformity of message from the White House down to the local Republican bloggers insists that some of us are right to call them on their inability to decipher truth from fiction.