Ensign's Scarlet Letter ; Republicans Need to Get Their Act Together

Summary

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An office affair and a blizzard of rule-bending are not the reason Sen. John Ensign, Nevada Republican, stands amid the irreparable wreckage of his personal reputation and political future. Such sleaze is all too typical in the nation's capital, where power, money and sex stand out as a warped political trinity. Mix power and a sense of entitlement with the Washington social scene, and you get a bipartisan recipe for scandal. Right now, there are Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill on the same path, secure in the delusion that they won't be caught.

Mr. Ensign's failure is bigger than the D.C. cliche. He stands accused of lying to fellow Republican Sen. Tom Coburn even as the Oklahoma conservative tried to help him, resulting in yet another potential ethical mess. At the time of Mr. Ensign's affair with the wife of one his senior aides and the subsequent cover-up, his fellow Republicans made him chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, where he was in charge of recruiting candidates and raising money for Republican Senate races across the country. He accepted this position of national responsibility in a year when Republicans were under assault and Democrats were in reach of a 60- vote Senate majority. There is no doubt Mr. Ensign failed to give the NRSC his full attention at a crucial time.

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Ensign's Scarlet Letter ; Republicans Need to Get Their Act Together

Democrats famously have rallied around their embattled philanderers with the cry that such misdeeds are "...

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