Yesterday’s bombshell arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was charged with, among other offenses, trying to sell Barack Obama’s vacated senate seat to the highest bidder, offered relief to one of our country’s most beleaguered minorities: the Republican party. An old-fashioned Democratic scandal, complete with bad hair and a challenge to tape him doing something illegal! Why, it’s better than Gary Hart.

You could hear the joy in Bay Buchanan’s voice on CNN yesterday, shortly after the news of the governor’s arrest broke, as she spoke of the drip-drip-drip of insinuations to come. You can see it in the headlines on the Drudge Report, with links to stories claiming the scandal “could dog Obama.” With the president-elect getting almost universally high marks for his transition efforts and cabinet picks, the right has had little to cheer about until now. Sure, there was the news that Obama planned on using his middle name, Hussein, when being sworn in as president. And yeah, there was his promise to give “a major address” in an Islamic capital once he takes the job. That kind of stuff is good for the black-helicopter types who flock to “resistance” sites like Grassfire.

But nothing says red meat like a tape of a former prosecutor saying that the political appointment it is in his power to make “is a fucking valuable thing, you don’t just give it away for nothing.” This is beyond brazen. This is just plain old crazy. 

Long before the election many Republicans (and some Democrats) believed that Obama’s time in the sewer of Chicago politics would be his undoing; surely some of that fecal matter would stick to his blue suit! So far no luck — but they are already pouncing on any association he may have had with the governor. Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod consulted to Blagojevich in the past (though their association ended in 2002) and both the president-elect and the governor have ties to convicted Chicago businessman Antoin Rezko. The GOP is clearly hoping this will be their Whitewater and perhaps a starter kit for a new vast, right-wing conspiracy to take down a Democratic president, even before he’s begun!

It’s clear that the party that got us into so much of our current troubles has nothing else to offer, but that’s beside the point. At Fox News (which slugged the story with the self-fulfilling headline “Blagojevich arrest puts Obama ties in the spotlight”) it’s like Christmas come early. And you know how they feel about Christmas.