For Sale
Ted Stevens, Alaskan senator, is in the news again. The last time around, he was the poster boy for pork barrels and boondoggles on the federal dime, including the infamous “bridges to nowhere.” Stevens was a popular senator, at least among Alaskans, precisely for those boondoggles. Stevens is widely known as one of the most skillful figures in Congress for bringing home the bacon, and Alaskans voted for him, and for Republicans nationally, on the strength of that skill.
This time around, though, he’s done something scandalous in Alaskan eyes, and not just in the eyes of the rest of the country that has to foot the tab for his popularity. He’s been indicted for ethics violations, specifically failing to report millions of dollars of gifts from the VECO Group oil interests—part of a broad swath being cut as a result of VECO coming under investigation for fraud and bribery, including convictions for its leaders, who are now “cooperating with authorities.”
Everyone knows he’s guilty. The lifelong Republican loyalists are pretending otherwise, of course. I’ve read comments to the contrary, apparently made in all seriousness. (It’s hard to be sure in discussion forums.) Some say he’s been framed by a partisan witch hunt, which is patently absurd in reference to a DoJ which has been aggressively subverted for the past ten years by the creeps running the Republican party, and the country, placing party loyalty ahead of competence or ethics—we just got the report this week. Some say he’s innocent until proven guilty, which principle only extends to the power of legal reprisal, not voter responsibility, and which is hard to accept from hypocrites who have spent a lifetime voting for and excusing “law and order” platforms that operate on a presumption of guilt. (Certainly, we have more reason to think Stevens is guilty than we do to believe some of those Gitmo prisoners were guilty of anything more than being Arabic without US approval.)
But the party faithful don’t bother me nearly as much as the independents who have proudly voted for Stevens in the past and still publicly state they intend to continue to do so, if they get the chance. And there’s a lot of these nominal independents, too: although Democratic challenger Begich is mounting a strong offensive in a very red state, Stevens still holds over 40% of the popular vote, and that in a political environment turned against Republicans and incumbents generally. Stevens remains afloat on the voters who argue that, okay, he may be a crook, the argument goes, but we really owe this guy a lot for all he’s done to bring money to our state.
In other words, “My vote is for sale. I will knowingly help to put criminals into positions of power, as long as I get a piece of the action.” Such voters are corrupt, too, even if they don’t have the moral fortitude to admit it. They just get paid less for their influence than Stevens does for his.