I’m reading this interview with MN Senate DFL Canidate Amy Klobuchar, which is a must read. But I had just had to comment one particular quote. He competitor for this seat, MN Congresman Mark Kennedy, hasn’t been connected with Abramoff. And, to be brutally frank about it, I don’t think he will, not in any big way. He simply wasn’t a big enough wheel in the House to be worth Abramoff’s money. So how can Klobuchar use Abramoff as an advantage in the campaign?
In my role as a prosecutor, you draw the line every day. We see white collar cases come into our office. It usually starts with someone maybe stealing a little money from the petty cash, and then they end up taking millions of dollars from the workers’ 401k accounts. And I believe it’s our job to draw the line and say there’s a difference between what’s right and what’s wrong.
Well, in 2006, it’s going to be the job of the American people, the voters. Because what’s happened here is really the responsibility of everyone in leadership in Washington, DC, because this started with them bringing… I always say, “You dance with the one that brung ya,” that that’s what’s going on out there. They would give tax loopholes to their friends and give companies the ability to send jobs overseas that brought them into office, and then the next thing you know, they’re taking PAC contributions and funneling them into other PACs, trying to hide them, and the next thing you know they’re lying before a grand jury. That’s what this culture of corruption is.
And if you asked how does my opponent, Congressman Kennedy… what does he have to do with it? I’ll just look at the prescription drug bill. This was a bill pushed by the Republican leadership. Congressman Kennedy did support this bill. And it basically insulated the prescription drug companies from competition.
Way to go, Amy! That’s how you connect even “clean” Republicans to the corruption. They’re following corrupt leaders- so the fact that they themselves may not have taken a bribe doesn’t protect you from the consequences of the corruption.
And I don’t think the Republicans get to bitch about this either (doesn’t mean they won’t). Mark Kennedy is responsible for his own voting record. He’s a grown boy now. The fact is that Kennedy, and McCain, choose to follow this leadership, and vote for these bills. “I was just following orders” wasn’t a defense in 1945, and isn’t a defense now. Especially because if they say that, the response is “who do you want in office- someone who blindly follows the orders of corrupt leaders, or someone who is willing to do what is right for Minnesota and the United States, and blindly follows no one?”
Reading this interview further, if she isn’t reading dKos and the blogsphere on a daily basis, she sure sounds like it. The paragraph on how we’re losing the middle class sounds like it was ripped right out of a Jerome a’ Paris diary (he won’t mind- he’d be ecstatic that the word is getting out). And the deficit? Notice how she’s pinning all of this on the Republicans- a job made easier by the fact that they’re actually to blame.
She has my vote.
Popularity: 2% [?]
