A Difference in Behavior Between Democratic and Republican Perpetrators?

Roger Ailes, not the one associated with Fox News, enjoys writing about Republican officials arrested. His latest post is this one, about a member of the Maryland House of Delegates arrested as part of a child pornography investigation.

Now, I can’t find a definitive list of Republicans and Democrats who have been arrested or convicted (and believe me, I looked far and wide for the book I’ve been working on), so what I’m about to write is based entirely on casual observation. I may be dead wrong.

My impression is that while you see both Dem and Rep officials arrested for taking bribes, the “other reasons” Dems get in trouble are different than the “other reasons” Republicans get in trouble. And bribes often aren’t such a bad thing… you can rise to a high level position in the Democratic House of Republicans if you were caught on tape expressing some interest in being bribed in the Abscam scandal, or rise to a high level position in the Republican Senate and be your party’s nominee for President if you were one of the Keating Five. Its all good.

Maybe its my poor recollection, but the non-bribery-related criminal (or allegedly criminal or simply “poor judgment”) activity engaged in by Democratic officials tends to fall under the category of taking campaign contributions from shady characters. Think Hsu, Al Gore’s lack of “controlling legal authority”, etc. Reps tend to get snagged for sex-related issues – think Mark Foley or Larry Craig, but there are dozens are lesser known names, as Roger Ailes is frequently pointing out.

That isn’t to say there aren’t other things that get elected and non-elected high poo-bahs in trouble… for instance, there’s petty theft (think Claude Allen or Sandy Berger for recent examples), but it seems to be kinda rare. And there are Dems that get in trouble for sexual issues (think Gary Hart and Bill Clinton for two high profile examples, even if neither was snagged for anything that was illegal) and Republicans that get in trouble for taking contributions from shady characters (look at the Giuliani and Romney campaigns for examples). But Dem perps lean in one direction, and Rep perps lead in another.

And the interesting thing is what gets these perps in trouble is behavior that their party makes a big deal about being against. Dems are for the little guy, but taking campaign contributions from big, shady characters is just about as un-little guy as it gets. Republicans talk about morality all the time, but molesting a child is pretty far from moral behavior. (I note that a large percentage of Reps with sex issues seem to involve homosexual activity, which of course is a big no-no to Reps in general.)

Anyway, that’s all I got on this subject. Am I right about this? If so, what’s the cause of it?

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Corrections. kf_in_dc and Bruce Webb pointed out that it was Mark Foley, not Foley that had the sex-related issues. Michael Hendry suggested that with references to the Congress, use of the “Reps” as an abbreviation could be unclear (party or House?).