Does the House leadership race matter?

NZ.Bear, of The Truth Laid Bear, has hosted a petition from what they describe as "Center-Right" bloggers to support a program of real reform in the House leadership. Rusty Shackleford of My Pet Jawa fame, has a counterproposal. Rusty feels that the premise behind Bear's petition is "silly and meaningless." If I am understanding him properly, he feels that influence and corruption are just not important, as long as they (the Congress) are doing the right things, "right things" in this case, being the policies that Rusty supports. It's not such a radical idea, I suppose. If I can put words into Rusty's mouth, he is saying, "what do I care if they get some lobbyist to pay for things, as long as they take care of the country's problems." Of course, on The Jawa Report he says it a bit more colorfully...

Give me 435 unethical, whoremongering, immoral, back room elected Congressman committed to limited government. Keep your transparency. I will gladly let my Congressman get away with just about anything in exchange for protecting me from the bad guys of the world and keeping his grubby paws out of my pockets. Let their paws remain in the pockets of whoever is trying to bribe them. Better their's than mine.

That quote is a bit unfair. It's the punchy soundbite of the piece, but Rusty's argument is a bit more "nuanced" than that. He argues that the current scandal grossly exaggerates the level of "corruption" involved, pointing out that these Representatives did not pocket money themselves, they spent it. Of course, they spent it assuring their own vise-like grip on power, so it's not like they used it to feed the starving.

What Rusty wants is a creature that does not exist, or is exceedingly rare. Politico's who are "immoral, back-room-elected" do not care about "limited government" except as a buzz-phrase for the stump speech. In office they care only for their own immoral backsides and the people in that back-room. You want to know why a supposedly conservative Congress can spend like a drunk? It's because they are drunk, drunk on lobby money and such.

Despite the regular calls to "throw the bums out!", there is virtually no overturn of incumbents these days. Voters are eager to see "the bums" turned out, but are equally sure that their guy is not one of the bums. Congresspeople are much nicer in person than their reputation would have you believe, and they work hard (their staffs work insanely hard). Americans generally do not send corrupt people to Congress, but the system that has evolved in Washington is terribly corrupting. People who ought to know better slowly get drawn into actions and behaviors and relationships that shame them. Some wake-up to it and quit. Others slowly change while the old friends at home wonder what happened to their champion.

And even if the Abramoff scandal is not all that real a crisis, perception matters a lot in politics. The other problem with the unethical and immoral is that they are eventually unelectable. Cleaning up the House leadership will not assure that the House will be "committed to winning the war on terror and getting the hell out of [Rusty's] life" (and mine), that's true, but failure to do so will assure that they won't be, 'cause they will be Democrats.

I don't know enough about Shadegg to support him with reasoning beyond the fact that he is new on the scene and an underdog. I suspect he's much more conservative than I, but there is no use wishing for a centrist majority leader, it isn't going to happen. Anything that upsets the overly comfortable applecart of the old leadership pleases me.

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