While debating the Blago affair, drliftncrude made the following request of me:

"Maybe one piece of data you could look into is how many Republicans are returned to Congress after a scandal compared to Democrats returned to Congress after a scandal and how many of those eventually reach chairmanship posts.  Off hand, I can think of Foley in Florida, Craig in Idaho, and Stevens in Alaska are all Republican slugs that are now gone.  On the Democratic side, Barney Frank is now a committee chairman, as is Ted Kennedy. William Jefferson was reelected in '06 and won his primary this year.  Alce Hasting is an impeached Federal Judge. If this tells us anything, it is that Republicans hold their elected officials accountable at a much higher rate than do Democrats..."

I thought then, as I do now, that this is an interesting question. There are, sometimes, trends in behovior that go hand in hand with a political view. I thought drliftncrude's theory was plausible, so I proceeded to look for the data he suggested.

As it turns out, there is much more involved here than suggested by the theory. First, it is quite important to take into account which party is in control of the Congressional body (House or Senate) because regardless of what they would like to do with an indicted colleague, they can't without a majority. So, to investigate a tendency for a party to be more forgiving to their own, we will have to compare those times when they had a choice in the matter.

Also, and just as importantly, there is the matter of how serious the allegation against the politician is. If, for example, the Senator was accused of storing his Mercedes in the Senate garage against rules (Rangel) then you would expect a different outcome than if the Senator failed to disclose tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts (Stevens).

Finally, it seems important not to count all senators or congressmen throughout U.S. history - especially since the Republican Party was once the representative of the Progressives in this country. Thus, I ignored all indictments before 1948, the year Strom Thurmond walked out of the Democratic National Conference and become a Republican - a truly watershed moment.

Finally, when one looks at the history of indictments in both houses of Congress, it quickly becomes apparent that there is more involved than the druthers of the colleagues. Sometimes law enforcement is pushing the issue, sometimes there isn't a vote but the politician leaves because of the bad press and pressure (short of the vote) from his or her colleagues. In other words, a party may drum a politician out of office without a vote or force him out with a vote. 

Here is the Senate data:

*Senators often quit before a vote can be taken.

Despite the fact that a Republican was the only one of this group to return to office, I don't think the Senate data, by itself, is demonstrative. Firstly, there is only a small number of people in this sample. Statistically, I don't think this would be enough to be significant. If there is anything significant here, it is that no Senator was indicted while Republicans were in control of the Senate. Of course, this might be simply because they weren't in control long enough to get around to it, but the overall picture thus far does little to support the thesis that Republicans are the stricter of the two parties.

 Note: I have had this saved since I started work on it. To continue, I will have to start doing some serious scouring of the internet to get some data on the House. To be honest, this hunt became much less important to me when it became clear that the Republicans are way ahead in terms of corruption. Michelle Malkin has blogged on the subject, trying to deflect the numerous criticisms of the "Republican Culture of Corruption" by naming a "Democrat Culture of Corruption" (http://michellemalkin.com/2... In that piece, she names several Dems who have gotten into trouble of late. Her list, however, is paltry in comparison to lists like this one: http://republicancultureofc...

or this one: (http://www.slate.com/id/216...

To give the reader a sense of how hopeless it would be to continue this research, take a look at CREW's list of "the 22 Most Corrupt Members of Congress" (http://www.citizensforethic...

The 22 Most Corrupt Members of Congress are:

Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-NM)

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK)

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA)

Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-CA)

Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA)

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA)

Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-LA)

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)

Rep. Gary G. Miller (R-CA)

Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV)

Rep. Timothy F. Murphy (R-PA)

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-PA)

Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM)

Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ)

Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY)

Rep. David Scott (D-GA)

Rep. Jerry Weller (R-IL)

Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-NM)

Rep. Don Young (R-AK)

...and as you can see there are only four Democrats on the list.

With the data this tilted in one direction, I don't think it's necessary to go on. Even if the trend I have identified so far were to reverse in the House, in terms of party strictness with their own, the shear volume of corrupt Republicans trumps any story about their self-policing efforts.

Some will necessarily want to claim that this list and the conclusions are wholly partisan. That is why I started with Malkin's piece: she clearly feels the need to answer the charge and has seen the data. Further, CREW appears to me to be reasonable moderate. They lean left some, to be sure, but they also feature pieces on the investigation of prominent Dems, like  Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y): (http://www.citizensforethic...

So: bottom line - w/ apologies to drilnliftcrude, I don't think I'm going to finish this project. There is, in this case, a (very large and obvious) foregone conclusion that doesn't require any more of my efforts to establish.