There’s no longer enough “walking around money” to buy off a few senators in hopes of securing, at long last, the liberal holy grail of gun control.Government’s Broke: Hooray | National Review Online
APRIL 19, 2013 by John Fund
Washington has less money for bribes, and that’s a good thing.
Imagine what the media reaction would be if in the aftermath of yesterday’s Senate vote blocking new background checks, a leading official of the gun lobby had explained his side’s success by saying: “Bribery isn’t what it once was. The government has no money. Once upon a time you would throw somebody a post office or a research facility in times like this. Frankly, there’s not a lot of leverage.” Washington would be in full outrage mode, and there would be demands to find out who had made such an offensive claim.
Of course, no such pro-gun official has said any such thing. But Politico reports that an official of one of the major gun-control lobbies told them precisely that. Save for a few blog posts and articles, the remark has gone unnoticed, despite the obvious legal implications.
But it shouldn’t. The analysis of the gun-control defeat in the Senate has focused on the role of the National Rifle Association. “The President reacted with a tirade of blame-shifting more shameful than any [of] our aging typesetters can recall,” noted the New York Sun. Indeed, President Obama called the gun lobby liars, throwing in key senators for good measure. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, who has poured millions of his own “special interest” money into attack ads and other media to promote gun control, called the vote “a damning indictment of the stranglehold that special interests have on Washington.”
Clearly, this is not the whole story. If the pro-gun-control official cited in Politicois right, the current government sequester is working — Washington has less money for bribes.-go to links-
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