POLITICO reports on the Democratic leadership's efforts to dissuade their members from voting for Rep. Jeff Flake's proposal for a wide-ranging ethics investigation into Rep. John Murtha and others' relationships to a lobbyist. Leaders told the members, "Don't be a Flake." They're worried, understandably enough, that the investigations will quickly become a political football that will undermine the House agenda and hurt the Democrats' chances to maintain their large majority come 2010; indeed, the breadth of Flake's resolution -- touching on 248 members -- makes it look like a fishing expedition.
These political concerns have to be taken into account, but someone needs to sit down with Nancy Pelosi and Chris Van Hollen and remind them exactly how they got their majority in the first place: Because Republicans did stuff like this. Say what you will about the other Republicans' motivations, Flake was on the ethics bandwagon when the GOP was in the majority as well -- it's why an otherwise promising member has never made it far in the leadership -- and rhetoric like this only plays into Republican hands.
The ethics committee is a mess; it's understaffed and not really run by someone who knows about ethics law. Perhaps it's not the best way to deal with this problem; it's certainly possible that referring investigations through legislation and not formal complaints does set a bad precedent. But the Democratic leadership can't just ignore Murtha and his ilk. They need to remove them from chairmanships, publicly reprimand them, and do what needs to be done to distance those members from the Democratic caucus at large. Looking back on 2008, one of the Democrats' biggest regrets has to be spending millions to protect Murtha after his late-campaign gaffe referring to his district as "racist." Many of the smarter Democratic operatives working on House races last cycle were angry as all get out that money that could have been spent on bubble districts went into Murtha's race; having him lose (or retire, for God's sake, he's 76) would have been the most elegant solution to this whole mess.
-- Tim Fernholz
