Robert Scheer: Republicans have lost high moral ground

Republicans have lost high moral ground

Robert Scheer, Creators Syndicate
Wednesday, December 7, 2005


CALL IT Tonto's revenge: The outrageous rip-off of Native American tribes by a top Republican lobbyist is leading inexorably to a reckoning for the allegedly morally superior religious and political right.
"I don't think we have had something of this scope, arrogance and sheer venality in our lifetimes," Norman J. Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote in Roll Call. "It is building to an explosion, one that could create immense collateral damage within Congress and in coming elections."

Selling firewater to the natives -- or in this case charging them $82 million for government breaks on slot machine and other gaming licenses - is not exactly what the high-minded prophets of the Republican revolution promised. And to see behind the scenes as Christian right superstar Ralph Reed, bought off by top Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, dupes his grassroots "pro-family" followers into unwittingly supporting casino-rich Indian tribes under the guise of anti-gambling initiatives, is to glimpse moral corruption of biblical proportion.

...

Overall, both Reed, once the religious right's boy savior, and Abramoff, the former head of the College Republicans, a "pioneer"-grade fundraiser for President Bush, and a stalwart friend of Texas Rep. Tom DeLay, come off as morally degenerate political savants in the Senate committee's files. Reed seems possessed by the gods of greed as he exults, "I need to start humping in corporate accounts!"

But Abramoffgate goes much higher than these two political pimps. In those e-mails between Abramoff and Scanlon, it is clear that they trafficked in their ties to DeLay and others in the Republican leadership. As the Washington Post reported, Abramoff "cultivated a reputation as the best-connected Republican lobbyist in Washington," and it was not a false claim. DeLay, who referred to Abramoff as "one of my closest and dearest friends," received no fewer than three free golf trips to Scotland from Abramoff, among other payoffs.

...

But what is already clear is that the Republicans' reputation for moral superiority is as dead as the Lone Ranger.