Vote Buying Scandal Rocks Dems

A Washington Post editorial is rightly scolding Democrat House Leadership for a scandalous $20 Billion in spending bribes to buy the votes of Congressmen to add a drop dead timetable for withdraw in Iraq. According to the editorial:

TODAY THE House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill that would grant $25 million to spinach farmers in California. The legislation would also appropriate $75 million for peanut storage in Georgia and $15 million to protect Louisiana rice fields from saltwater. More substantially, there is $120 million for shrimp and menhaden fishermen, $250 million for milk subsidies, $500 million for wildfire suppression and $1.3 billion to build levees in New Orleans.

Altogether the House Democratic leadership has come up with more than $20 billion in new spending, much of it wasteful subsidies to agriculture or pork barrel projects aimed at individual members of Congress. At the tail of all of this logrolling and political bribery lies this stinger: Representatives who support the bill -- for whatever reason -- will be voting to require that all U.S. combat troops leave Iraq by August 2008, regardless of what happens during the next 17 months or whether U.S. commanders believe a pullout at that moment protects or endangers U.S. national security, not to mention the thousands of American trainers and Special Forces troops who would remain behind.

This action is egregious in multiple ways. First, the Dems are showing loudly and clearly that their criticism of GOP spending was a sham. They did not care about the taxpayer or the deficit while they were grandstanding in front of the media. Their rants against GOP spending were chokingly hypocritical. Liberals will always stand behind what they claim will be the "greater good" in order to do their dirty work. The informed knew that spending under the Dems would be as bad or worst.

Second, the Dem leadership is stealing from the taxpayers in order to bribe some of their fellow members into voting the way they want. What ever happened to the most ethical congress? What is the difference between this bribe and the $100,000 freezer bribe given to William Jefferson? Or the bribes given to Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney? Or the bribes given to a campaigning Hillary Clinton in exchange for pardons by her president husband? Nothing is different! They are all bribes in exchange for political favors. Is their argument so weak and the public support for their views so weak that they need to bribe their members. The editorial states the "The Democrats claim to have a mandate from voters to reverse the Bush administration's policy in Iraq." While I may disagree, if they think they have a mandate, why does it take bribes to get their votes? How many times did we hear from the media about Tom "the Hammer" Delay whipping the votes. What is this: whipping-bad, bribes-good? These bribes are scandalously representative of those providing them AND those willing to receive them to change their votes.

Third, the Dems continue to play games with our national security. As the quote above states, the firm timetable does not care what is going on at the time the deadline hits. It does not care who's life is in danger or any other related circumstances. The Constitution gave such responsibilities to a Commander in Chief, not to an unthinking piece of paper. The Dems continue to put their agenda above the safety of our troops and our people. You would think that having such a tarnished image in this area that they would be doing something to correct it. I guess repayment to their radical leftist puppetmasters comes before national security or their image.

Fourth, the fact that none of these actions target any timeline for a withdrawal from Afganistan shows how disingenuous the Dems are. They paint a picture that we are also doing poorly in Afganistan. This whole "mandate" claim is that the people do not feel the war on terror is going well. How is Afganistan any different? The kook left claims that Bush lied about WMD in Iraq AND that he is actually behind the 9/11 attacks. So why does one war front get a pass? Political games, that's why.

I am sure if I put some more thought into this I could find other reasons why this scandal is such a terrible thing. I wonder how much play it will get in the media? It seems only GOP scandals are worthy of day after day coverage. At most Dem scandals get a mention and then onto something else. The army of the uninformed and misinformed marches on.