Last weekend on Fox News Sunday, House leadership candidate Roy Blunt had the following exchange with host Chris Wallace:

WALLACE: All right. Now that Tom DeLay has stepped down, Republicans are saying — and you just said a moment ago that you have to show that you’re the party of reform. You have to show that to voters. But some question whether you are the man to do that.
Let’s take a look. In 2002, you tried to insert language into the Homeland Security Act to help Philip Morris tobacco while you were dating that company’s lobbyist. Since 1999 you’ve received at least $429,000 in campaign contributions from lobbyists. And your campaign committees paid $485,000 to a firm linked to lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Are you the one to clean up the House?
BLUNT: Well, I’m pretty sure that last figure is absolutely not accurate. But in terms of cleaning up the House, you know, the fact is that I have set or met the highest standards in the history of the Congress on that wall of separation between people who are in your family and the work they do […]
In terms of that legislation that you mentioned in whatever year it was, that’s since been passed by both houses of the Congress. It was good legislation. I wasn’t trying to slip anything in… This was not something I was trying to do on my own. It was good legislation, since been passed by both houses. It was the right thing to do. We decided collectively it wasn’t the right moment to do it. The sinister part about that story was somehow I was trying to slip that in. It just was not true.

On the tobacco provision in the Homeland Security Bill, Blunt was right. This provision wasn