It didn't take the Democrats a long time to figure out that Tom DeLay's ethical problems could turn into political capital for 2006 (something I've argued for some time). As Hans Nichols reports in The Hill, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (the high priest and rabbi of the vast left-wing conspiracy) has devised such a plan.

Democratic House leaders are casting about for squeaky-clean congressional candidates — even if they’re long shots — to challenge prominent GOP incumbents who have been tainted by news reports of their allegedly unseemly connection to lobbyists.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) strategy, still in development, aims to make ethical charges the touchstone of those campaigns and would use several high-profile local races to create a national image of corruption in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives.

Several Democratic lawmakers and aides said that Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) will be the first target of this new strategy.

Explicitly borrowing from the anti-corruption planks in Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America,” and hoping to replicate the 1994 watershed victory that followed, the new plan suggests that Democratic leaders believe they need to weave themes of abuse of power into any successful campaign to recapture the House.

This is exactly what Emanuel should be doing at the head of the Democrats' campaign committee. All too often it is assumed that entrenched incumbents are not defeatable, but there is certainly no way of defeating them if no resources are put into a campaign. With sufficient money and a well-designed plan -- which it appears Emanuel has created with the anti-corruption plank -- the Democrats have a shot at retaking the House in 2006.