R. Allen Stanford and the Democrats' Culture of Corruption

Matt Lewis | February 18, 2009 12:21 PM

If you haven't heard, financier R. Allen Stanford has been busted for scamming his clients out of 8 billion dollars, and he's apparently gone missing in an attempt too flee the country. Now, maybe this is a bit petty of me, but I took a gander at

Mr. Stanford's political contributions, and you'd be amazed where a lot of his money went - straight into the coffers of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). To be sure, there are a number of Republicans who got one or two thousand dollars from Mr. Stanford, but the biggest money went to the DSCC. All told, that organization got over $500,000 of Stanford's ill-gotten fortune back in 2002. That makes the DSCC, by far, the largest political recipient of Stanford cash.

I'm sorry, but as a political writer, it intrigues me that big-time financial scammers seem to show a pronounced preference for Democrats. Bernie Madoff's political money went almost entirely Democratic, and while Stanford was a little more bipartisan, he did give the DSCC more than five times as much money than he gave to his biggest Republican beneficiary.

It's going to be interesting to see whether anyone in the media figures out just how well people like Madoff and Stanford fit into the Democratic culture of corruption - right alongside Rod Blagojevich and William "Cold Cash" Jefferson. Maybe the next billion dollar investment fraud will be committed by a hard-core conservative - but right now the score is Democrats 2, Republicans 0. Personally, I'm not surprised. After all, when you think about the trillion dollar scam shoved down our throats by Congress last week, it only makes sense that the Dems would be the preferred party of the world's shadiest financiers.