Shame and the GOP

Steve Benen has a nice outraged post about the new GOP candidates for 2010 that were involved in the U.S. Attorney scandal a few years back.  Hey, Steve!  How about a little context? 

Watergate figures G. Gordon Liddy, Chuck Colson, and Fred Malek are all respected members of the GOP and/or conservative establishment (to be fair, John Dean seems to be a respected member of the Dem and/or liberal establishment, or at least someone that a lot of them treat as if he's respectable.  Big mistake, in my opinion).

Scandal-plagued former Speaker Newt Gingrich is too.  Tom DeLay, as well.

As is Iran-Contra figure Ollie North. 

And Ralph Reed, of the Abramoff scandal.

And that's off the top of my head; I'm sure there are more -- and I'm not even counting the torture gang from the recent administration.

Can't think of many equivalents on the Democratic side.  Jim Wright slunk off and disappeared from public life, as far as I know.  Dan Rostenkowski?  Pretty quiet after prison.  I don't notice Mike Espy having a regular show on MSNBC, and Henry Cisneros, who was as far as I can tell not even guilty of anything, is at best a very quiet back-room player, if that.  I'm sure many Republicans would say that Bill Clinton trumps all of them, but if you want to count him, you would have to count Reagan (Iran-Contra) and Bush (torture), not to mention the Vitter/Ensign wing of the Republican party, or values guru/slot machine addict Bill Bennett.  If I'm missing major figures (from either side), please add a comment. 

So, no, this is basically just business-as-usual for the GOP.