I had a friend in town over the weekend. He's a Democrat but less activist in his overall leanings, and prone to say things like the following:
"I'm so sick of the corruption that's just hanging over DC. Regardless of party, I just can't trust those people."
Which is what he said one afternoon as we drove around San Francisco. And I naturally quoted him chapter and verse about the fact that the Abramoff scandal hasn't touched the Democrats, and that the Republicans are the ones indulging in corrupt and venal behavior, and that he shouldn't lump the good together with the bad.
This evening, I saw a late-breaking headline of exactly the sort that I might find a way to explain to other True Believers, but I'll never be able to explain to my friend. In fact, I'm a little unsure how to explain it to myself: Does this make "us" as bad as "them"?
The answer doesn't have to be yes. For my reasoning, check below the fold. This diary ended up having a surprise ending (to me).
From
Reuters:
Milberg Weiss gave top Democrats fundingMilberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman LLP, the securities class action law firm indicted last week on fraud charges stemming from corporate lawsuits it filed, made large political contributions almost exclusively to Democrats since 1999, records show.
The firm and individuals there made $2.78 million in campaign donations to Democrats since 1999 compared to about $22,000 to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics.
The article goes on to enumerate the Democratic candidates who have taken money from Milberg Weiss -- including lots of big names, from H. Clinton to Schumer to Spitzer -- and to propose that this connection will be used by the Republicans in 2006 to defuse the charges of corruption surrounding the GOP. The amounts of money involved are big, in the millions total.
Milberg Weiss was accused last week of paying more than $11 million in kickbacks to plaintiffs in securities fraud cases that netted the firm more than $200 million in attorneys' fees (for this story, see the Seattle Times and CNN). I'm not familiar enough with the details of the case to comment on its merits, but it does sound like the feds weren't messing around: There are more than 20 counts, including mail fraud and perjury, and the firm is the largest ever indicted.
The firm also specializes in a sort of case that the Bush administration has tried to seriously limit in its efforts to control "trial lawyers."
So this sounds like a one-two punch for the GOP: On the one hand, they attach an albatross to the Democrats' neck on an issue where the GOP is perceived to be weak (Swift Boat, anyone?); on the other, they get to see one of their whipping boys get seriously whipped.
I started this diary intending to ask, in some way that was more genteel than this: What's our spin? But I've realized that I know what the "spin" ought to be: We ought to do exactly the right thing, without coyness or hesitation, immediately.
People who take campaign money from people who get it by fraud should give it back. We don't use one set of standards for the Republicans and another for ourselves (see especially recent coverage of the William Jefferson case, in Talking Points Memo and elsewhere throughout the liberal hemiblogosphere). If a firm like Milberg Weiss had given loads of money to the GOP, we'd be screaming for their blood, and for the money to be given back, and we wouldn't care much whether the candidates/recipients knew where the money came from.
If the whole party as one says: We took this money in good faith; we now believe it to have been the fruit of a poisoned tree; we therefore must return it -- it sounds like the right thing to do. Could it happen? Should it happen? Would it work (to defuse the story)?
I'm asking. The story just broke and I really don't know.