So Who Wins And Who Loses In The Abramoff Mess?

Newsweek‘s Howard Fineman gives his take on the winners and losers in the Abramoff mess. Read the entire piece but here are some of the standouts he mentions.

Firstly, according to Fineman, the amount of alleged bribe money contributions at play here is NOT “business as usual.” It’s a stunning amount, even for Washington. It is, Fineman contends, “the biggest influence-peddling scandal to hit Washington in recent times…” A few highlights:

LOSERS

–Members of Congress in general whose names come up in this scandal, and the Republican Party in general:

The semi-conventional wisdom here is as follows: Some Democrats are likely to be stained by ties to Jack Abramoff; polls show that the public has a plague-on-both-your-houses attitude toward wrongdoing in Washington; therefore, the GOP won’t be hurt in November. I don’t buy it. Republicans are the incumbent party in the Congress. They are led by a less-than-popular president in the traditionally weak sixth year of his presidency.

Exactly. For an independent voter to turn on talk radio what’s most striking is the “well, Clinton did it, too” mantra. It’s going to be hard to press that line in 2006 because for six years the GOP has been in control of virtually all of the wings of government. If GWB didn’t have problems on other fronts (some voters irate over the war; some voters including libertarian Republicans either upset by or raising their eyebrows over warrantless surveillance; voters turned off by the influence of social conservatives) this issue could possibly be neutralized. But it comes within a difficult POLITICAL CONTEXT — giving a sense to those who are not lockstep Bush supporters that the GOP is a party that may have too much power and has gotten arrogant.

–The GOP Congressional leadership:

…DeLay, facing state charges in Texas, could have a tough re-election campaign, if he gets that far. Semi-figurehead Speaker Denny Hastert, installed in the job by DeLay, hastily returned all of his Abramovian campaign contributions, but that only served to underscore his visibility. Look for a major shake-up in the GOP House leadership, perhaps soon.

And don’t forget Senate Majority Leader Senator Bill Frist. Has he helped his party in 2005 or did he hurt it with the questions raised about his financial dealings, his legislative defeats and his seeming willingness to hold his finger up and test the political winds (go back and look at news stories on stem cell research). Some GOPers surely must be asking themselves: Can’t our party do BETTER than this? (The answer is YES because the GOP has lots of political talent that could step forward to offer a fresh face and new approach).

–The Bush-Rove White House:

No one is alleging, and I think it is unlikely, that Boy Genius Karl Rove knew in any detail what kind of crook Abramoff really was. On the other hand, Rove was, and in remains — unless he is indicted in the Plame case, the puppet-master of Republican Washington…..The process of building that machinery began long before Rove came to town with Bush. DeLay, Abramoff, Grover Norquist and others began assembling it after the GOP took the House in 1994, demanding that corporate types hire Republicans — and not just any Republicans, THEIR Republicans. Rove then took command of that vehicle when he moved to the White House in 2001. Rove will have a hard time claiming now that he didn’t know how the machinery worked, especially since Abramoff himself became a major contributor to Bush’s re-election campaign.

That horrible word used by psychiatrists comes to mind here: at the least Rove will be accused of “enabling,” of turning away with a wink, figuring “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” and “if it’s not discovered, don’t stop it.”

WINNERS

–The Seeds Of A Third Party Movement? Fineman says yes:

If Sen. John McCain doesn’t win the Republican presidential nomination, I could see him leading an independent effort to “clean upâ€? the capital as a third-party candidate. Having been seared by his own touch with this type of controversy (the Keating case in the ’80s, which was as important an experience to him as Vietnam), McCain could team up with a Democrat, say, Sen. Joe Lieberman. If they could assemble a cabinet in waiting — perhaps Wes Clark for defense, Russ Feingold for justice, Colin Powell for anything — they could win the 2008 election going away.

These are “if” thoughts. As my grandmother used to say: “If I had wheels, I’d be a trolley car.” Still, there are enough independent voters and non lock-step Democrats and non lock-step Republicans who could support a serious third party effort if they conclude that both parties and their candidates smell.

BUT: we disagree with Fineman: any third party movement is headlocked by a host of constraints and it isn’t a “given” that they would win hands down. On the other hand, never forget how serious Ross Perot looked until he pulled out of the campaign. It’s not impossible.

–Public Integrity Section:

The Abramoff case is proof, at least so far, that it’s possible for lifers in the bureaucracy to still have a corrective influence on politics run amok in the capital. The case has been handled from the start by professionals who do this kind of work out of a sense of loyalty and idealism. We’ll see if Attorney General Alberto Gonzales leaves them alone if they start working their way toward the White House.

Indeed, that’s going to be the thing to watch. Will there be inklings that this investigation is being tinkered with? If so…watch out. The GOP should keep in mind that Bush won not just with the votes of the base but by peeling off some Demcrats and getting some independents. If there is interference and McCain doesn’t get the nomination we then revise our previous statements: there could be great sentiment and enthusiasm for an independent party candidate. Could it succeed? Then you get back to the Democrats. Do they give people who aren’t true Democrat believers a reason to join forces with them or do they play largely to their own liberal base?

Bottom line: There are a host of big issues at play in 2006 that will impact the overall dynamics — not just one issue such as national security or Iraq or corruption. What can happen to tilt public opinion one way or another?

UPDATE: There are a slew of posts on this issue on the Internet today. Due to time constraints, we can’t list them now but make sure to read The Heretik’s always-original (in style and content) take on it.

A key quote: “THE HERETIK NOTES the irony of power meeting power. One sadly expects the Texan DeLay to respond to the energy of energy lobbyists, but to find a response to foreign lobbyists as well challenges the idea that only our larger homegrown corporate cronies tilt good running of government off the table.” Read it all.