"What the Republican Party Needs is 50 Jack Abramoffs" -- Grover Norquist
A friend of mine once wrote a piece that started off, “nothing like having one’s neck in a noose to focus your attention.” I figure that must be what it feels like down at Republican headquarters these days where RNC President Ken Mehlman is spinning so fast against the Abramoff scandal avalanche he seems to be getting dizzy.
I don’t know how else to explain the Republican party’s apparent new effort to distance themselves from the corruption scandal washing over the Republican Congress and lapping at the White House doors by positioning the GOP as “the party of reform.” Unless of course Mehlman too has been sipping at the White House vodka.
As reported in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Mehlman outlined the Republican strategy in comments last week to Grover Norquist’s ‘K’ street breakfast club. The article quotes Mehlman as saying in an interview “Your going to hear from this president and see the Congress consider an agenda of real change and real reform in 2006.”
And if that’s not enough to make your head spin, the Republicans are apparently putting Norquist out front and center in the effort to redefine what the Abramoff corruption scandal is really about. The Times article quotes Norquist as saying “the GOP’s ideas could be both “ a shield and a sword.” for inoculating Republicans against corruption charges and pointing out Democrat’s excesses. Norquist will apparently outline his thinking in an article to be published this week the conservative journal “The American Spectator.”
I know that Republicans believe they can “make up their own reality,” but this is a little over the top, even for a group who apparently believed the Iraqi people would throw roses at the feet of U.S. forces instead of shrapnel. Norquist after all was one of the first players whose name rose out of the muck during the initial investigation into the lobbying activities of Jack Abramoff and his partner in crime Michael Scanlon.
As reported in May by New York Times (restricted access) Abramoff’s tribal clients gave $1.5 million to Norquist’s organization Americans for Tax Reform at the behest of Mr. Abramoff. The tribes also gave an additional $250,000 to the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, an organization with questionable environmental credentials founded by Norquist and Gale Norton before she became Secretary of Interior. According to the National Journal , Abramoff used Americans for Tax Reform as a conduit for funneling payments to Ralph Reed's political consulting firm Century Strategies to help defeat an Indian Gambling measure that threatened Abramoff's clients.
And in November the Washington Post reported in that Norquist was part of a little ménage- a-trois with his old pals Abramoff and Ralph Reed in which funds from Abramoff’s gambling clients (in this case E-lottery) were first cleaned up by laundering the funds through Americans for Tax Reform before sending it on to Reed throught another group, but not apparently before Norquist took his cut.
The bottom line is that while the Republican spin machine may be trotting Norquist out to distance the party from Abramoff, the reality is that Abramoff and Norquist are connected at the hip. If they were any closer they’d be having sex. The connection between the two reaches back to their college days when Norquist ran Abramoff’s successful campaign to become chairman of College Republicans, and later to Citizens for America, a conservative group where they both worked.
It is that relationship that has metastasized into the cancer of corruption that is today threatening the Republican control of Congress and the Whitehouse. As the Republicans gained power it was Norquist along with Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff who built the K street project, showering favors on lobbyists in exchange for their fealty and oath of loyalty to the Republican cause.
And so while the Republicans prepare to make their pitch as the “party of reform,” they might want to take a minute and remember that it was Norquist who once told the National Journal, "What the Republicans need is 50 Jack Abramoffs." It looks to me like they have them.
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