Fancy Store-Bought Dirt

I think the opulence moved up to the next level when the Republicans got comfortable in the majority, felt it was permanent, and truly believed that having the corporations make contributions for the right to write legislation was a sustainable way to run the government. Yeah, the Democratic chairmen of the 1980s and 1990s lived well, but what we started to see was a huge increase in the amount of money flowing into lobbying, and a large number of people who saw Congress as a way to gain credentials for a lucrative lobbying career. Think of Billy Tauzin, a Democrat-turned-Republican, who wrote the Medicare bill and took a huge job lobbying for Pharma right away. There are loads of Republicans who went in to the executive branch to handle contracts for hardware and services who get the contracts signed and then jump to lobbying for the vendors. Look up the K Street Project--when Republicans realized they could service their donors by favoring them with legislation, it was only a short step to blackmailing them into continuing to give them money if they want to keep up their access.

Democrats could do that too, but the tension with an ostensible anti-business platform make it harder to get away with actually favoring big business. If you believe half of what you write about Democrats practicing socialism and Republicans as the party of free speech in the form of unlimited cash contributions, you'd see that Democrats have far fewer opportunities to milk private corporations for money, and that Republicans live very well indeed with a clean conscience.

Dinner parties aren't the tiniest bit of it. It's the kind of thing people at NRO focus on to divert attention from the real game. A Democrat munching arugula and sipping cosmos with Maureen Dowd may be "elitist," but meanwhile the Republican committee chair just retired and walked into a $2,000,000/year job running a lobbying firm.

If the Democrats get entrenched in Washington, they'll start to do the same. It certainly happened with some Democrats who, although in the minority, felt their districts were perfectly safe for them so they could disregard their constituents and get on the money train. Albert Wynn of Maryland is a good example.

Anecdotally, the Republican Party seems to have all of the people who genuinely believe that $200,000 is a middle class lifestyle and that people making $150,000 could be barely making ends meet. By the standards they're used to, that is accurate... the people making $150,000 in Northern Virginia are spending so much to maintain a certain lifestyle for them and privileges for their children that they probably aren't saving anything. It's just not how most Americans live, though.

Anecdotally, the Republican Party seems to have all of the people who genuinely believe that $200,000 is a middle class lifestyle and that people making $150,000 could be barely making ends meet.

Really??? I have pretty much seen those people clustered in a few metro areas (NY, SF, DC, etc) that all lean heavily Democratic.

Chad, what I had in mind were the elected officials who goof up and say things like that they consider $200,000 to be a middle-class salary. You're right, there are more than a affluent few Democratic voters who feel that way, but the elected officials don't.