A quick backgrounder of the scandal so far:
On March 9, Politico reported McCaskill had charged taxpayers for 89 flights she took on the plane she owns. Though it's not rare for senators to charter flights for official business, and it's a common and accepted practice for senators to charge the government for those flights, McCaskill sent the Treasury $88,000 to cover the cost of the flights after Politico asked about them.
Then it was discovered that at least one of the flights was a political trip and definitely should not have been paid for with taxpayer money. McCaskill said she was "embarrassed." Which is also what she said yesterday when she revealed that she failed to pay close to $287,000 in personal property taxes on the plane.
McCaskill also said she has attorneys looking for more political travel on the official flight list. So far, they've found some.
Adding to the political peril for McCaskill: Her very public record of taking others to task for transgressions with strikingly similar overtones.
The question then becomes "who ratted her out to Politico", and of course "what else is she hiding?" At best, McCaskill is a fairly reliable vote for the Democrats, but she's shown a few Blue Dog tendencies from time to time (It's Missouri, after all.) The problem is that Republicans now see that they have their way to get her seat by flogging this story for the next 18 months, and the more McCaskill splits hairs, the easier it becomes for the GOP to simply fail to tell the truth about the issue.
In other words, it's a perfect situation for this to become something much worse than it is for her, and unless McCaskill gets a lid on this thing soon, she's going to lose in 2012.
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