I share Jon Fleischman’s disappointment over the Traditional Values Coalition and its role in the Abramoff sleazefest. But I’m a lot more worried than he is, not because the TVC’s activities have been outside the norm of acceptable political behavior, but because in modern-day Washington, they are the norm. In the national news media, Reverend Lou Sheldon’s role in this ethical circus has received a relatively small amount of attention, because similar behavior has been attributed to conservative activist Ralph Reed, who is alleged to have taken money from Abramoff’s Indian gaming clients to oppose other gambling expansion. Not to slight Reverend Sheldon’s political 
import, but Reed, who was a major player in the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign and is currently a candidate for Lt. Governor of Georgia, is a major, major player in national Republican politics. He’s also one of the savviest operators in the political arena today, which makes me wonder exactly how broad and how deep Abramoff’s tentacles have invaded the GOP body politic.
It’s worth noting that Republican politicians are a long way from cornering the hypocrisy market. (Read this morning’s Los Angeles Times story about how the United Farm Workers use non-union labor for their housing and construction projects because it’s more affordable. And it was congressional corruption among an entrenched Democratic majority that led to the Gingrich revolution in 1994.
But twelve years after American voters turned out an arrogant and out-of-touch Democratic leadership for their ethical lapses, it’s worth noting that similar anger is beginning to erupt against Congress again. While polls show that voters do not consider either major party to be any dirtier than the other, the lessons of ’94 suggest that the party in power tends to bear the brunt of populist resentment. A month or two ago, I thought that gerrymandered congressional districts would allow Republicans to maintain a majority. Now, I’m not so confident.
Tom DeLay’s decision to step down as Majority Leader was legally premature but politically necessary. But it’s also not nearly enough to convince voters that we’ve addressed and reined in the ethical and spending excesses that have again come to characterize life in Congress. Will Republicans voluntarily move more quickly and assertively to fix a broken system, or as they did twelve years ago, will the voters do it for us?
There are big differences between 1994 and 2006, most notably the lack of ideological direction and cohesion among today’s Democratic Party that characterized the tax, welfare, and congressional reforms in the Contract with America. Voter outrage toward Congress may have created an environment for change that year, but it took a substantive set of policy alternatives for Republicans to take advantage of that unhappiness and channel it into a new political course for the country. The continuing Democratic drift on the war, on taxes, on trade, and on virtually every other top-tier policy issue facing this country, offers some protection to Republicans in an otherwise hostile environment.
But Nancy Pelosi’s strategic shortcomings, while extraordinary, are still a fairly thin reed on which to rest a congressional majority. So while I agree with Fleischman’s concerns about the Traditional Values Coalition, I worry much more about the larger trees in the forest.