House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) is reaching back to her political past and playing the corruption card for the fall midterm elections. As The Hill reports, Pelosi has been spurred into political outrage by the unexpected arrest of Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) last week.
Painting the Republicans as the party of big-business graft is nothing for an embattled and aging Democrat. She used the same theme in 2006 when she first became House Speaker. Pelosi hopes to connect the dots between Collins — who was an early advocate of Trump — and the president.
Democratic strategist Brad Bannon thinks it’s a slam-dunk strategy.
“The Collins case is another brick in the wall. It makes the linkage between Trump’s broken promise to drain the swamp and House Republicans,” he told The Hill. “It shows voters that instead of cleaning up the swamp, that the swamp has just become more poisonous. It’s a very useful strategy to go after Collins and make the connection to Trump.”
Pelosi seized on the Collins scandal quickly, demanding his resignation and rushing to the post office with a “Dear Colleague” letter that implored her fellow Democrats to convince voters that Democratic integrity must control a House currently dominated by the Republican’s “brazen corruption, cronyism and incompetence.”
Pelosi told MSNBC on Sunday that the Republicans can’t be trusted to look after the common folk.
“There’s a real clarity now in the obstacle that their culture of corruption is doing to impede better policy,” Pelosi told “AM Joy.” “Members of Congress should not be sitting on boards of companies, especially those whose are impacted by policies — policy decisions and the government — so this is appalling, but it shows the brazenness of it all.”
