Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself

Patrick Murphy (D-PA8) is quaking in his boots.  He's going to get swept away in the November GOP tsunami, and he evidently is sufficiently aware of it that he's decided to come out of the racist closet:

Congressman Patrick Murphy called on Charles Rangel to resign this morning as the former Ways and Means chairman was set to face the airing of ethical charges by a House jury.

Murphy, the 8^th District Democrat, said “as the facts came out, it was pretty clear what his conduct was. I believe that it’s a discredit for the institution.”

Three down, two hundred fifty two to go.  But really, who would have foreseen there being ANY Dems willing to throw so prominent an African-American member of their caucus to the Brrrrrrreit-bart-a wolves?

Oh, did I mention that Betty Sutton, the only member of the trio that didn't figure to go down in November, is polling behind her Republican challenger, Tom Ganley?  And upwards of fifteen more House Donk incumbents are also trailing, and those are polls that have actually been publicly released?  Hmmm; maybe there'll be a lot more rats fleeing Good-time Charlie's sinking ship, no?

Maybe - if the presumption of its sinking is as premature as Mark Twain's one-time obituary:

A House investigator says the panel handling Representative Charlie Rangel’s ethics case has recommended a reprimand by the full House — but that decision could be months away.

Representative Gene Green, who’s on the subcommittee that investigated the New York Democrat, says that’s the recommended penalty for the twenty-term New York Democrat. Rangel is facing thirteen charges of wrongdoing.

OOOOOH!  A reprimand!  For shenanigans that would have put him behind bars for years if he were a mere private sector peasant like the rest of us, instead of CHARLES RANGEL, once and future Chairman of the Powerful House Ways & Means Committee.

Is it any wonder that he referred his own case to the Ethics Committee in the first place, and has been so devil-may-care about copping a plea?  Or that Crazy Nancy had such a drastically divergent definition of "draining the swamp" than the voters did when she bamboozled them into electing her with that "Republican culture of corruption" bilge?

Folks, anybody who has been paying attention to American politics for any significant length of time could have seen this turd coming from parsecs away.  It's as I said four years ago: the Democrats wrote the book on corruption, they wrote the book on abuse of power, and the wrote the book on imperial arrogance.  The last GOP majority, even at its end in 2006, was rank amateurs compared to what was coming from their Donk replacements.

Nobody listened.  Are they listening now?

Well, wouldja believe....Red Barry is?:

“I think Charlie Rangel served a very long time and served – his constituents very well. But these – allegations are very troubling,” Obama told Harry Smith in an interview to be aired on the Early Show and first broadcast on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

“And he’ll – he’s somebody who’s at the end of his career. Eighty years old. I’m sure that – what he wants is to be able to – end his career with dignity. And my hope is that – it happens.”

I can conceive of only two possible explanations, and I've forgotten the first one.  That leaves something akin to the Sherrod saga, where the White House makes what a bit of cursory communication and coordination would have promptly revealed was an embarrassingly unwarranted assumption.

Unless....unless Godbama wants Rangel gone.  There really isn't any upside to his sticking around, after all; that's a safely gerrymandered black Donk seat, Good-time Charlie is damaged goods, and Barry did go out of his way to emphasize what a fossil he is.  If Rangel quits, it's a free PR innoculation against a complete Dem wipeout in three months.

It'd suck for Rangel, but in the big political picture, could President Spock actually be right?