Informed Speculation

In the wake of Abramoff, Delay, et al, some of our friends on the left have suddenly become saint-like in their assertions that the Republicans are the ‘party of corruption’. Quid pro quo has been around far longer than the Republican majority, however, and Hillary knows how to play the game as well as any Republican:

…[S]ince Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected to the Senate in 2000, Corning and its mainly Republican executives have become one of her largest sources of campaign contributions. And in that time, Mrs. Clinton has become one of the company’s leading champions, delivering for it like no other Democratic lawmaker.

In April 2003, a month after Corning’s political action committee gave $10,000 to her re-election campaign, Mrs. Clinton announced legislation that would provide hundreds of millions in federal aid to reduce diesel pollution, using, among other things, technology pioneered by Corning. It was one of several Congressional initiatives Mrs. Clinton has pushed that benefit the company.

And in April 2004, Mrs. Clinton began a push to persuade the Chinese government to relax tariffs on Corning fiber optics products, inviting the Chinese ambassador to her office and personally asking President Bush for help in the matter. One month after the beginning of that ultimately successful effort, Corning’s chairman, James Houghton, held a fund-raiser at his home that collected tens of thousands of dollars for her re-election campaign.

Not to worry, though, it’s the New York Times, and for Democrats corporate cronyism is just serving the folks back home:

It is part of a senator’s job description to help a major employer in his or her home state, and it is not unusual for that employer to encourage that help or to reciprocate with campaign contributions. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, her alliance with Corning provides a window into how she has used her singular clout as a former first lady on behalf of new constituents in her adopted home state, and how those efforts in turn have helped her to bolster her already powerful fund-raising machine and win over previously skeptical New Yorkers.

See? Money’s not dirty when a Democrat grabs it.

Imagine how a similar story involving Tom Delay would have been written…an astonishing example of transparent bias…