Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

And former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) called on House Republicans to elect a new majority leader to permanently replace Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), Abramoff's most powerful ally in Washington, who faces a trial on unrelated criminal charges of violating Texas campaign laws.

"Unequivocally, the House Republicans need to select a new majority leader in late January or early February," said Gingrich, who cited revelations in The Washington Post that a public advocacy group organized by DeLay associates had been largely financed by Russian energy interests.

The White House seems to have gotten the TDM memo as well. Today's news reports that the Bush/Cheney 2004 re-election campaign will donate $6,000 of Abramoff money (quite the suspiciously paltry sum) to the American Heart Association, and yesterday Scott McClellan was reported performing the two-step backpedaling distance tango on behalf of his boss:

McClellan said Abramoff attended three Hannukah receptions at the White House over the past several years.

"The president does not know him and does not recall meeting him. It is possible that he could have met him at a holiday reception or some other widely attended event," he said.

Now with that statement, you just know that the White House went into scramble mode and found some Polaroid of Bush and Abramoff embracing and smiling at a holiday party. Given the incompetence of executive spin control of late, it's safe to say further buddy photos most certainly will surface and the White House will continue to dismiss them as common PR shots of the presidential glad-handing type that every president poses for a hundred times a day.

Given Abramoff's skyrocketing prominence in the malfeasance category, I thought it would be instructive to see if the media had perhaps been digging up dirt on him in the past couple of years and we somehow didn't notice. Alas ... no. Typical is the following Hill fluff piece from March 2003. I reproduce portions of it here just to elicit a few yucks in light of the past few weeks of news, with particular bolded emphasis on the more ironic parts.

"I'm the only lobbyist who took a 90 percent pay cut to join the lobbying field," a smiling Abramoff said in his downtown office this month. But he doesn't expect sympathy -- with the Republicans now in control of the White House, House and Senate, and his friend Tom DeLay (R-Texas) controlling the House agenda, Abramoff does not have to look far to find clients interested in his services.

But, he stresses, being a leader in Republican fundraising and strategy doesn't guarantee success for his clients.

"I think it's a very different administration ... compared to the Clinton days," Abramoff said of George W. Bush's White House. "They're going to go out of the way to make sure that they are not courting special favors to lobbyists and to special interests. They'll only agree to things on strict merits.

"From a good government point of view, that's very refreshing. From a lobbying point of view, it's obviously more of a challenge."

Uh ... sure, Mr. A. Whatever you say.

And then there's Abramoff's  informed and confident prediction about success in Iraq:

"It's hard to imagine [a war] isn't going to go well," Abramoff said. "You have a country that for 12 years has been under sanctions and unable to build its military, and we've been 12 years of light-speed progress."

Clearly, this is one lobbyist with a broken crystal ball during the month of invasion.

But here's the part I like best. When asked by a reporter if he'd ever consider being a candidate himself, Abramoff answers:

"It's too tough for my family," he said of running for office. "My wife would kill me."

Yes, the campaign trail is way too tough on the family, Mr. A, as opposed to being held up as the poster boy for bribery on a level unimagined since the days of Ulysses S. Grant. Good call.