Personally? I feel that being in power for ambitious people leads to a sense of superiority and entitlement which encourages delinquent behavior partially based on a sub-concious pleasure gained from flaunting the system. The specific act may not even matter, it's the fact that they know that they can...or believe that they can, anyway.

You are probably only listening to sources who like to highlight it when Republicans are in the bad light.

The GOP certainly has not cornered the market on financial, sex, and/or ethics scandals. They didn't have a Congressman who hid bricks of cash from illegal contributions in his freezer. They didn't have someone strike a security guard who was just doing their job at the XRay machine and then pull the race card out as a defense. They didn't have someone crash through the gates at 2am while sleep-driving on Ambien. ...and they haven't had a seated president involved in a sex scandal (the Dems have had not one, but two presidents involved in extramarital allegations: B.J. Clinton and JFK).

Those are just off the top of my head... I could spend a bit of time researching cases of scandals on the Democrat's side, but lets just suffice it to say that scandals happen on both sides.

No, I don't think that the GOP "flames out" any more than the Dems do.

What's up is that the Repubs come from a pious background that lies to itself while engaging in heinous acts - thinking that all they have to do is say "Sorry" and God forgives them. They have a lack of personal responsibility or ethics, because they believe everything they do is "God's will" so they should be fine.

Dems have no such illusions and have to rely on themselves for their morality. They believe in consequences for their own actions and taking responsibility. So when they do something wrong, they take all the blame, generally before people even jump all over them for it, and move on.

Oh, also, Republicans are hypocrites and everyone love to see them get a taste of their own medicine.

Actually, pretty much every group that's compiled a list of both agrees with you.

Here's a list of Republican sex scandals, and a more comprehensive one by The Daily Kos. Here's a book published on the subject.

The consensus seems to be that the Republican list is longer than the Democrat one, and generally more disturbing. Democrats tend only to sleep around on their wives, while if you're looking for paedophilia or bestiality, you need to go to the GOP.