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The Spectacle Blog

Newsweek Writer Says Rangel Must Go

By Philip Klein on 10.8.09 @ 10:19AM

Over at Newsweek, Ben Adler makes the case --from a liberal perspective -- for Democrats stripping Charlie Rangel of his chairmanship. He's worried that if Democrats circle the wagons to defend Rangel, it will hurt them badly at the polls, just as the culture of corruption theme contributed to Republicans losing power:

The Democrats were not elected on a promise to return to the days of when the minority party had more power in policymaking, but they were elected on a promise to clean Congress's dirty laundry. Either Democrats prove that the days of Duke Cunningham-like behavior are over, or they will repeat the mistakes of the Tom DeLay-era Republicans, and voters may punish them at the polls for their hypocrisy.

I think Adler is right to be concerned. It wasn't just 2006 -- in 1994, Democratic scandals such as the Dan Rostenkowski House post offfice fiasco helped bring Republicans to power in the first place. While ideological voters tend to decide who to vote for based on issues, election outcomes are often determined on non-ideological grounds by swing voters. This is one reason why ideological types are often surprised when their team gets to power and it turns out that the public is not as supportive of their actual policy goals as they imagined.

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Dixie Pixie| 10.8.09 @ 11:11AM

Has anyone considered the voters of Charlie Rangel's district want the most corrupt, dishonest con man they can find. After all, the voters of that district are no angels. Maybe the voters are getting exactly what they want

tonypal| 10.8.09 @ 12:52PM

There is a bizarre mindset that afflicts liberal voters, although it's easily understood given the simplicity of the liberal mind. Basically, one's morality is defined by one's politics.

Bill Clinton was the ultimate example of the way the liberal mind views morality. Clinton was an absolute lecher, a serial abuser of women who was seemingly the embodiment of all that liberal feminists despise in males. Yet the feminists defended him vigorously in spite of the horrendous way he treated the women in his life.

This was a constant source of frustration to many on the right who were convinced that feminists were acting hypocritically, but in fact they were not. The dirty little secret is that the feminist movement is only interested in the advancement of women if it furthers their true agenda, socialism. That's what animates feminists, just as it animates the NAACP, an organization that regularly overlooks racism from within the ranks of the democrat party.

So, with Clinton, as long as he defended abortion rights, he was always going to get a pass from the feminists. Now we have Charlie Rangel, a man essentially running a mid-level criminal enterprise. It's not so much that the voters of their district want a criminal as their representative, they simply ignore it because Rangel shares their views and brings home the bacon. I'll guarantee that if tomorrow, Charlie Rangel announces he's had an epiphany and is now a right wing conservative, the voters in his district, along with Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the democrat caucus in the House, will suddenly discover the criminal in their midst.