Rolling Stone's Take On The House GOP

You have to check out the story in Rolling Stone on the House GOP.

Here's their take on the leadership race:

Of the two leading candidates for the recently vacated House majority leader seat, one (acting leader Roy Blunt) had attempted to slip tobacco-friendly language into a Homeland Security authorization bill while having an extramarital affair with a Phillip Morris lobbyist, while the other (John Boehner) had once been caught handing out checks from tobacco interests to members of Congress on the floor of the House.

On the Blunt family:

There are three candidates for the leadership spot, who represent three distinct strategies for dealing with the current crisis. The front-runner is the acting leader, Blunt, who pointedly represents a strategy of doing nothing at all. Blunt's biography is brimming with the kind of pornographic devotion to money and corporate privilege that was a prerequisite for political success in the good old days.

The Missouri congressman three years ago ditched his wife for a Phillip Morris lobbyist named Abigail Perlman, whom he subsequently married; it's been a profitable marriage, as Phillip Morris (now called Altria) has donated more than $270,000 to committees tied to Blunt. Meanwhile, Blunt's son Andrew is also an Altria lobbyist, and Blunt's other son, Matt, is governor of his home state -- elected, conveniently, with the help of funds from Altria. One gets the impression that the whole family spends its holidays sitting in a circle, two-fistedly smoking Chesterfields while handing each other wads of hundred-dollar bills.

Blunt's hands are also wet with the blood of the Abramoff scandal; as party whip he co-signed (with DeLay) letters on behalf of a Louisiana Indian tribe represented by Abramoff. Meanwhile, Abramoff is one of the first names on the list of 2004 individual donors to Blunt's PAC, the sickeningly named Rely on Your Beliefs fund.

Blunt appears to be the choice for majority leader in the event that the party concludes that it still has a chance to get away with absolutely everything, Abramoff trial be damned.

And on Boehner:

But the next choice, Ohio long-timer John Boehner, appears to be the cosmetic fallback position should the party conclude that business can go back to operating as usual only after a few carefully chosen heads are rendered unto Caesar -- whomever Abramoff decides to give up.

On the surface, Boehner would seem a brilliant choice; he has game-show-host looks, no shame and has never been indicted for anything. Although his own sugary-titled PAC, the Freedom Project, has accepted some $31,000 from Abramoff clients over the years, there are as yet no allegations that Boehner has ever traded favors with the Evil One.

Still, folks around the House describe the long-serving Boehner -- who was kicked out of party leadership once before (he was House Republican Conference chairman in the 104th and 105th congresses but lost his seat when his mentor, Newt Gingrich, was ousted) -- as having an off-putting, semi-delusional, almost Kerry-esque sense of entitlement about the leadership post.

Boehner's zeal for the leadership post is such that he issued a thirty-seven-page Power-Point presentation to campaign for the job. The document is a towering monument to political cliche, wrapping quotations of Reagan, Churchill and John Paul II around paeans to the virtues of change, light, hope, "big goals" and hitting the accelerator while others stay stuck in neutral.

But for all his sterling qualifications, Boehner can hardly be described as someone who lived outside the K Street/DeLay universe.