Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona entered the race for House Majority Leader today. And a group including many of the most repected bloggers on the Political Right issued the following statement addressed to House Republicans:

An Appeal from Center-Right Bloggers
We are bloggers with boatloads of opinions, and none of us come close to agreeing with any other one of us all of the time. But we do agree on this: The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street.

We are not naive about lobbying, and we know it can and has in fact advanced crucial issues and has often served to inform rather than simply influence Members.

But we are certain that the public is disgusted with excess and with privilege. We hope the Hastert-Dreier effort leads to sweeping reforms including the end of subsidized travel and other obvious influence operations. Just as importantly, we call for major changes to increase openness, transparency and accountability in Congressional operations and in the appropriations process.

As for the Republican leadership elections, we hope to see more candidates who will support these goals, and we therefore welcome the entry of Congressman John Shadegg to the race for Majority Leader. We hope every Congressman who is committed to ethical and transparent conduct supports a reform agenda and a reform candidate. And we hope all would-be members of the leadership make themselves available to new media to answer questions now and on a regular basis in the future.

Signed,

N.Z. Bear, The Truth Laid Bear
Hugh Hewitt, HughHewitt.com
Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com
Kevin Aylward, Wizbang!
La Shawn Barber, La Shawn Barber’s Corner
Lorie Byrd, Polipundit
Jeff Goldstein, Protein Wisdom
John Hawkins, Right Wing News
John Hinderaker, Power Line
Jon Henke / McQ / Dale Franks, QandO
James Joyner, Outside The Beltway
Mike Krempasky, Redstate.org
Michelle Malkin, MichelleMalkin.com
Ed Morrissey, Captain’s Quarters
Scott Ott, Scrappleface
John Donovan / Bill Tuttle, Castle Argghhh!!!

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I’ll sign it too. But I’d like to add the request that, in addition to battling lobbyist corruption, Republicans remember that they were elected to do something other than buy themselves votes with the taxpayers’ money. Democrats were already doing exactly that, and they lost the majority in both houses of Congress precisely because the voters in this country had tired of old style special interest politics and pork.

And I would ask Republicans to make sure that the clean-up includes some of those undoubtedly eminently deserving democrats as well.

Signed,
David Zincavage, Never Yet Melted

The Republican National Committee on its web-site note that 40 of the 45 democrats in the Senate accepted money from Jack Abramoff, his associates, and Indian tribal clients.

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Earlier posting