The Republican Party Is Mired In A Culture Of Corruption

(This image is an 1871 cartoon by Thomas Nast.)

Corruption is nothing new in the Republican Party. They have long tied themselves to the rich in this country, and willingly traded their votes for campaign donations, sweetheart deals, and illegal payoffs.

They make promises to ordinary Americans at election time, but after the election they break those promises and go back to policies that favor the rich to the detriment of everyone else. They invented the Washington swamp, and love to wallow in it.

But since Trump moved into the White House, the GOP corruption has grown by leaps and bounds. Taking their cue from Trump, Republicans no longer even try to hide it. They not only act to protect Trump's obvious corruption, but revel in using him as a template for their own behavior.

The following is just part of an article by David Air at Daily Kos:

It was a phrase as memorable as it was powerful, and Democrats used it with devastating effectiveness: the “culture of corruption.” That rotten culture had taken deep root throughout the Republican Party, and by hammering this simple notion on repeat, Democratic candidates helped turn the 2006 midterms into a rout, winning back Congress and finally putting a check on George W. Bush’s extremism and incompetence.

The very same thing is happening again today. Everywhere you turn, congressional Republicans are mired in scandal and ethical disaster:

• In upstate New York, Rep. Chris Collins was indicted for insider trading after he received private information that a company he’d touted for years was about to go under, then advised his family to sell off their shares, avoiding enormous losses.
• In southern California, Rep. Duncan Hunter was indicted for spending campaign funds on personal expenses, like vacations to Italy and a $600 airplane ticket for his kid’s pet rabbit, then filed false financial reports claiming, among other things, that the money had gone to “wounded warriors.”
• In Virginia Beach, staffers for Rep. Scott Taylor filed fraudulent signatures—including those of at least four dead people—to help an ex-Democrat (who herself is on trial for fraud) get on the ballot as an independent in order to split the vote with the real Democrat.
• In suburban Ohio, Rep. Jim Jordan stands accused of failing to report the sexual abuse of student athletes by a team doctor when he was a college wrestling coach, and has encouraged his supporters to blame a delusional “deep state” conspiracyfor his woes.
• On the gulf coast of Florida, Rep. Vern Buchanan bought a new yacht worth at least $3 million on the very same day he voted to give himself a tax cut of $2.1 million—and paid for it with a loan from a bank that lobbied for the very same tax legislation, which Buchanan himself helped write.
• In the suburbs of Phoenix, Rep. David Schweikert is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee because of his chief of staff’s questionable levels of outside income and lavish spending of taxpayer dollars, including $5,000 on a getaway to Super Bowl weekend.
• In Orange County, California, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, best known as “Putin’s favorite congressman,” has gone before two congressional committees over his ties to Russian officials and is reportedly of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as well.

And none of this even touches on the extraordinary corruption that starts at the very top, with Donald Trump and his venal cabinet, but it’s very easy to connect everything together as part of one giant, reeking miasma of sleaze. Republican leaders in Congress, eager for tax cuts and conservative judges, simply ignore Trump’s self-dealing, sending a message to their own caucus that the same behavior is acceptable on Capitol Hill, too.