Anti-GOP disgust surging high enough?

In a column in yesterday’s NYT, Paul Krugman argued– in my view, convincingly– that the relationship between opinion poll results and the results of the upcoming congressional elections is not really a linear one. And while many commentators have said that the Democrats might have “just enough” votes to get a narrow win in one of the houses of Congress, Krugman thinks it more likely that either the Dems will “just fail” to do that– or, their support might be sufficient to surge over all the levees the GOP has secured itself with until now, bringing about a much stronger democratic showing than anyone else has yet forecast.
He gave some good reasons, based on electoral districting issues, for this prediction. I should add that we also need much stronger reassurance than we now have that the electronic voting machines most jurisdictions will be using will record the actual votes cast, and are not subject to tampering. One of the main producers of these machines, Diebold, is a big supporter of the GOP.
… Anyway, the poll numbers continue to portend good news for the Democrats. Even Fox News is reporting the Dems’ numbers have gone up– from 41% to 50%– over the past month. The GOP numbers reportedly rose from 38% to 41% in that same period. As you might surmise, the number of “undecideds” has dropped steeply.
And today, reading the WaPo was an amazing experience. (I only got home yesterday, after five days in NYC. While I was there I didn’t read the WaPo closely– just a few key articles online.) Nearly the whole front half of today’s paper was a catalogue of now-being-exposed Republican misdeeds.
Like this piece, which gave us a timely update about the fate of Ohio GOP congressman Robert Ney who “pleaded guilty yesterday to corruption charges arising from the influence-peddling investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff,” as part of a plea bargain with federal prosecutors. The story said that Ney, appearing before a federal judge in DC,

admitted performing official acts for lobbyists in exchange for campaign contributions, expensive meals, luxury travel and skybox sports tickets. Ney also admitted taking thousands of dollars in gambling chips from an international businessman who sought his help with the State Department.

Sentencing will be January 19. The government is recommending he get 27 months in prison.
But here’s another wrinkle. Ney– who for the past month has been hiding from reporters and the public with an “I’m in rehab for alcohol addiction” claim– has said he he won’t resign from the House before November 7. The party system in the US is so weak that there’s no way, it seems, for the GOP leadership to “force” him to resign. Party leaders, claiming embarrassment, told the WaPo reporters that if Ney does not resign, then in the “rump” session of Congress held after the election they will move to get a congressional vote to expel him from the House.
… And then, there is more news about the Mark Foley congressional-“page” harrassment scandal. Foley, a discredited GOP Congressman from Florida, has also pulled the “I’m a recovering alcohol who needs privacy for my rehab” trick since his harrassment of pages was revealed a couple of weeks ago.
… And here is another one: Pennsylvania Republican Curt Weldon is the subject of an FBI investigation into what are described as “lucrative lobbying and consulting contracts for his daughter”. That report is from McClatchy newspapers, whose people write:

At issue are Weldon’s efforts between 2002 and 2004 to aid two Russian companies and two Serbian brothers with ties to former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic, a federal law enforcement official said.
The Russian companies and a Serbian foundation run by the brothers’ family each hired a firm co-owned by Weldon’s daughter, Karen, for fees totaling nearly $1 million a year, public records show…
Two years ago, the Los Angeles Times examined Curt Weldon’s parallel efforts in Congress on behalf of the Russian and Serbian clients of his daughter, prompting the House ethics committee to briefly explore the issue.

It’s unclear what the (GOP-controlled) “ethics committee” decided to do about that back then.
Weldon has not yet checked into rehab… Might happen soon?
The WaPo piece on Weldon has a small photo of the guy, standing there with fleshy white jowls drooping over the top of a too-tight collar. Many other GOP congressional leaders– among them House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who has been put strongly on the defensive over accusations that he helped cover up Mark Foley’s predatory sexual proclivities for a number of years– also seem to favor this look, which smacks of privilege, excess, and a strong sense of entitlement.
These sad old guys may well, of course, been merely taking their lead from the White House, where Bush has led an administration whose addiction to privatization and the distribution of lucrative favors to friends has marked its practice in both foreign and domestic affairs. (Think Iraq. Think FEMA.)
Will the Democrats be any better? Only if we, the citizenry, keep on their case to hold them accountable over the issues we care about. But oh, it is great to think that there now seems to be a chance that on November 7 the storm of disgust with the Republicans’ wrongdoings will be strong enough to surge right over the levees of the GOP leaders’ privilege, corruption, and militarism.