Can Republican corruption be turned into a Democratic vote?

If Democrats are going to be able to play the “corruption” card – Duke Cunningham, Delay, Abramoff, the various accused Republican-appointed sex offenders, et al – and succeed in getting the press to go along with a narrative other than a pox on both of your houses (the Republicans have those guys, but the Dems have Jefferson, too), they need to go beyond the offenses themselves and tie them into Republican ideology and dominance of all branches of government. The ideological connection that can resonate with an average voter is typical Republican coziness with big money, as evidenced by examples such as the Norquist-Delay “K Street Project” and its more than doubling of Republican lobbyists since Bush took office. The Republican Party today does not give a flying you-know-what about limited government, other than government limited to looking out for the interests of the wealthy. We know that power corrupts, and it should not be hard for voters to connect the dots between the tendency towards corruption and Republican dominance of all three branches of government. The fox guarding the henhouse – nothing new.

According to reports, Francine Busby in California tried to center her recent losing special election campaign for U.S. Representative from California on the corruption issue. But I have seen no indication that her message was other than “Republicans are corrupt, I’m not.” Voters are never going to buy a bald implication that Democrats are somehow just better people than Republicans. But they might buy the idea that today’s Republicans, having been captured by an extreme right-wing ideology that caters to Big Money people, as well as the fact that there is nobody to oppose anything they decide to do, are more susceptible to corruption – and therefore need to be swept out of office.

It’s the same with the message of incompetence: don’t just say, “Look at the incompetence of the Bush administration, so vote for me” but tie it into the dominant Norquist philosophy of “starving the beast” (government) so it can be drowned in a bathtub. It was Clinton and Gore who actually reduced the size of the Federal Government. People who hate everything government does, no matter how much it helps ordinary people, cannot be expected to run it competently.

Simply pounding the powerful message, “Did you know that fat-cat Republican lobbyists in K Street area of Washington have more than doubled just since George Bush took office?” – as a proxy for every other ill flowing out of this unchallenged administration -- will knock the Republican vote down 10% all by itself. Strong reminders of the incompetence and corruption arising out of right-wing ideological dominance of all three branches of government might knock off another 10%. Do it right – stay away from the personal, keep it about principles -- and maybe we could shrink it far enough to drown it in a bathtub.

The majority in the country thinks we are moving in the wrong direction. In 10 five-letter Ango-Saxon words or less, Democrats need a way to convince voters that the Republicans are doing it because they are Republicans, and Democrats, because they are Democrats, will turn things around.