Reid To Investigate Republican Corruption

by Chris Bowers, Tue Dec 14, 2004 at 06:01:32 AM EST

At least that was the way I wish he was framing this otherwise positive development: WASHINGTON - New Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said Monday his party will launch investigative hearings next year in response to what he said was the reluctance of Republicans to look into problems in the Bush administration. (...)

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who heads the Democratic Policy Committee, said the first hearing will be at the end of January and he suggested it might focus on contract abuse in Iraq. He said the policy committee, which has held occasional investigative hearings in the past, planned to convene at least one such hearing a month.(...)

Dorgan said that with Republicans controlling the White House and both the House and Senate, "the congressional watchdog remains fast asleep in this Congress."(...)

The Democratic-organized hearings would not have subpoena powers, but Dorgan said there are plenty of whistleblowers "anxious to tell their story."

The ongoing legal troubles of, among others, DeLay and Santorum make for nice discussion among us junkies in the blogosphere. However, only investigations into the White House itself will draw sustained national attention. Reid and Dorgan are doing the right thing, the sort of aggressive maneuver that Democrats so badly need. They need to tie it to better language, however: corruption, scandal, cronyism, etc. After all, hearings like this are only partially about actually uncovering wrongdoing. Just as importantly, they are about dominating the national political frame.

Tags: Democrats (all tags)

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Shadow_head_small
and "fat cats!"
Don't forget "fat cats!"  I'd like to see us get used to using that word a lot.

It plays to the reform angle and helps us recapture so much of the latent cultural and rhetorical ground we need to win back.

We can run as the anti-Washington, responsible government, honest, Main Street party of regular folks.

All you cat bloggers out there, get over it:  "fat cats" is good strategic, preemptive attack.

by Pachacutec 2004-12-14 06:28AM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
I saw them on CSPAN
A reporter asked them a question indicating that they weren't being bipartisan. Their response was that the Republican leadership had abandoned the Congressional duty of oversight. Republicans have had virtually no oversight hearings aside from 911 issues.

The MSM is going to do their best to demonize everything Dems to and lable them as obstructionist. They better get used to it and learn to tell the MSM and right wing attack dogs that they aren't going to bow to Republican and media censorship about scandals.

by Gary Boatwright 2004-12-14 08:04AM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
This is the kind of thing
That the SCLM will salavate over and eat up, and repeat, repeat, repeat.  Handled correctly, in eighteen months, we will be known as the party of the reformers.

Blogs can be a very good source of material on the corruption of the wingers.  We can help frame the arguements.  We can google and publish the support for charges.  We can make up where the lack of staffers leave off.  (interesting concept, hmmmm)

This is Harry, low key, effective.

by NvDem 2004-12-14 10:20AM | 0 recs

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