Oooh, Frank Luntz must have been busy. The right, by which I mean the Republican Party and its representatives in the media (both in sense of Fox News and individual pundits like the sometimes almost bearable William Kristol) have seized a new rhetorical strategy to prevent the sinking of the SS. Conservatism. Every legal reaction to the manifest curruption of the modern right is now deemed "the criminalization of politics."
Lord knows if this were a society populated by decent people, that wouldn't float. Are there really people out there who think we hold politicians to to high an ethical standard? The same people promulgating this line spent the years 1993-2001 harping on Clinton's crookedness and immorality, spending millions of dollars to investigate minor infractions and right-wing fictions. Turnabout is fair play.
But it's not even turnabout. These people are real crooks. CIA agent-exposing, rat-fucking, money-laundering, extortionist, power-hungry criminals.
The fact is that the Republicans criminalized politics.(By Republicans, I mean the party, not Jeff, or the guy who lives across the street from me) Not in the way they mean it. They turned the sometimes icky business of kissing babies, raising money, selling yourself like cornflakes, and promising things you can't deliver, and turned it into a criminal enterprise. They have no concern for appearance of propriety (see Halliburton, Frist's insider trading, the selection of crony Harriet Miers) because they have the media bent to their will, and millions of Americans who would vote for Charles Manson if he ran on family values.
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