http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/16/opinion/main1133619.shtml
Reed's Greed
Dec. 17, 2005
by Terence Samuel.
The Bush Administration finds itself in a very odd place -- under and
sinking fast -- and for them, the dislocation must be staggering.
And while it is interesting to watch as the White House unveils its
new candor campaign in trying to right itself, that effort may be the
definition of 'too little, too late.'
All you have to do to understand the extent of the GOP's problems is
to look at what is going on with one-time Golden Boy Ralph Reed, who
is on the 2006 ballot in Georgia.
He is going under fast and taking other Republicans with him, in
magenta-red Georgia no less.
The founding executive director of the Christian Coalition, who ten
years ago appeared on the cover of Time under the headline, "The Right
Hand of God: Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition," has GOP leaders
in Georgia so worried that some of them are asking him to withdraw,
fearing he will kill their entire ticket.
For Reed, this run for lieutenant governor is part of an assault on
greatness: lieutenant governor in 2006, governor in 2010, and
president after that.
But Reed is an example of what Jack Abramoff will mean to the GOP next
year.
Reed was an integral part of the Abramoff gambling swindle in Texas in
2002, in which the former super lobbyist worked both sides of the
gambling debate, working for one client to get a casino shut down,
with Reed's help, then signing up the vanquished Indian tribe for more
than $4 million to get the casino reopened, which he tried to do with
the help of the now embattled Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio.
It is hard to measure but impossible to deny the damage that Abramoff
has done to the GOP's chance in 2006, and Reed may become the poster
boy for the Abramoff Effect in the 2006 midterms.
If Republicans can't pull off the political reversal they need in the
wake of Iraq and Katrina and get rid of the scandal cloud over the
Congress, the 2006 elections may go down in history as the end of the
GOP revolution of 1994, a 12-year period during which they not only
ran the government, but developed a pugnacious, unsentimental way of
doing business and an overconfidence that Democrats still have not
figured out how to match.
And in a lot of ways, Reed and Abramoff were archetypes of the times,
and weaved into the collapse of their personal and political fortunes,
is the demise of a political movement.
Obviously, they are not alone:
Tom DeLay is in trouble with the Justice Department,
Conrad Burns is paving the way for a Democratic senator from Montana,
Bob Ney needs a criminal lawyer, and
Duke Cunningham is going to jail.
But Reed and Abramoff were part of that GOP crowd that seemed to have
figured out something fundamental about American politics that would
make them unbeatable.
Two other notables on that list, Karl Rove and Grover Norquist, have
also attracted the attention of federal investigators.
But, what is clear now is that they just had a better game face, just
wanted it more, and it has been tragic to watch them become what they
so often evangelized against: corrupt, self-dealing, political prima
donnas.
Reed and Abramoff came to Washington about the same time, the
beginning of the Reagan Administration.
Abramoff had just been elected chairman of the College Republican
National Committee and Reed would be his first executive director.
Norquist had been Abramoff's campaign manager.
They were driven, young idealists.
When we last see them, however, Abramoff is a millionaire lobbyist and
Reed is begging him for business from corporate clients.
In one of the thousands of e-mails that federal authorities
confiscated from Abramoff, one from Reed reads:
"Hey, now that I'm done with the electoral politics, I need to start
humping in corporate accounts! I'm counting on you to help me with
some contacts."
In 2001 and 2002, Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon began
funneling money to Reed to fight gambling in Texas, mostly an effort
to shutdown the El Paso casino run by the Texas Tiguas.
After they shut it down, Abramoff calls the Tiguas and promises to get
it reopened in return for a few million bucks.
But of course the friends begin haggling, not over the direction of
the conservative movement or how to change the world, but over money.
Abramoff wrote an e-mail to Scanlon in early 2002 about Reed, which
asserted, "He is a bad version of us! No more money for him."
And there goes your revolution, folks.
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"SUVs don't burn down by themselves." -- Some elf in a bunny suit
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