The Gathering Corruption Storm

Below, Pete Wehner raises a different film analogy for the fate that awaits the Democrats. If their push for health-care legislation is like Pickett's Charge, then their prospects for November are like a perfect storm. Wehner names three factors which, on their own, would spell trouble for the party in November—then notes that all three are striking at once.

Moreover, the New York Times has a fairly accurate description of how Texas Governor Rick Perry used anti-Washington sentiment to win a contested Republican primary—indicating the strength of the public's distaste for the party in power.

It's nice to know that, for once, the Democrats are likely to get precisely what they deserve.

"The Gathering Corruption Storm," Peter Wehner, Commentary, March 3

[W]e are seeing the different elements required to form a political thunderstorm amass—a storm that will likely batter Democrats in November.

Three ingredients are required to form the real thing: moisture, an unstable airmass, and a lifting force. The political version of this meteorological event are a bad economy, unpopular ideas, and corruption. Democrats are facing all three.

The corruption issue manifests itself in several ways. There are legal forms of corruption, like the “Nebraska Kickback,” the “Louisiana Purchase,” and special tax benefits for union members, all part of the unseemly wheeling and dealing needed to jam through ObamaCare. There is the misuse of power we are seeing from the president in the form of trying to use reconciliation to pass ObamaCare. And there is the kind we see with Representative Rangel and New York Governor David Patterson—and now, we have just learned, Representative Eric Massa, a Democrat from New York….

My hunch is that the storm in the making is, at least at this stage, more powerful and disruptive than any of the ones that came before it.



Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of "The Intellectual Activist (TIA)" and contributor to "The Freedom Fighter's Journal."