One-Note-Nancy Singing the Bellwether Blues

President, er... Speaker, um... House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's favorite refrain may not be a tune she can carry much further.

Despite Pelosi's tenacious insistence that Republicans have single-handedly imbued Washington with a Culture of Corruption (notwithstanding Patrick "I'm Late, I'm Late" Kennedy, Cynthia "Rock 'em Sock 'em" McKinney, and William "Cold Cash" Jefferson), yesterday's special election in California for Duke Cunningham's Congressional seat didn't pan out as she might've hoped.

Republicans claimed victory in the California special election early Wednesday morning as former Rep. Brian Bilbray led Democrat Francine Busby by four points with 96 percent of precincts reporting.

The 50th District race Tuesday was a runoff pitting the top two finishers from an April election to replace disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) and was billed as a bellwether for the upcoming general election in November, where Democrats hope they have the wind at their backs and a chance to retake Congress.

But that wind wasn’t enough Tuesday in solidly-Republican San Diego, where Bilbray secured nearly 50 percent of the vote and Busby trailed at just over 45.

Busby's showing of 45% was similar to John Kerry's performance in the district, suggesting little hay was ultimately made of this most dramatic instance of Congressional corruption, in terms of maligning the convictee's party, simply by political association.

Corruption is still as bad a thing as it was when Nancy and Pals first picked up this drum beat, and the truly corrupt are still bums we should hastily toss out.  But if there's a lesson to be learned from the Bilbray-Busby contest, perhaps it's that you can lose some of that good government high ground, no matter how desperately you want it, when your own members are alleged to be off punching cops, lying to cops, and refrigerating stacks of bribe money.

For her part, Busby probably didn't tip the less-corrupt-than-thou scales in her favor with her comments that seemed to many (myself included) to encourage illegal immigrants to support her campaign, perhaps even at the ballot box (depending on exactly how you choose to parse her gaffe).

Elsewhere:
Bryan at Hot Air considers the immigration implications of the Bilbray victory.
Expose the Left rounds up lefty blogger reaction.