The rich pile of Abramoff documents release by the
Committee on Indian Affairs is producing new Abramoff scandal stories every day, sometimes every hour.
Yesterday's Pay to Play story about Gabon paying Jack $9 million to meet with W is being picked up around the world. And Gov. Bob Ehrlich of Maryland should have to explain the involvement of Edward Miller, Erhlich"s deputy chief of staff, at every campaign stop next year.
But Mike Scanlon's "Wacko quote" is part of the Abramoff lore that we should spread far and wide. John McDonald has a good post today at etalkinghead.com that moves the discussion along...
Here is the GOP "bring out the whackos" strategy:
"Bring out the Whackos"
"The whacko's get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees. ... Simply put, we want to bring out the whacko's to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them."
Those are the words of Michael Scanlon, former press secretary to the pious but indicted Congressman Tom Delay and top executive at Capitol Campaign Strategies, a public relations firm in Washington D.C.
Scanlon's words describe his strategy for protecting and promoting the gambling interests of the Coushatta Indian Tribe of Louisiana. It seems that Scanlon and his lobbyist pal Jack Abramoff cooked up a scheme to siphon millions from the Coushetta and got Ralph Reed of Christian Coalition fame and now head of Century Strategies, a political consulting firm with strong ties to the Bush White House, to help them out. Together they worked to mobilize anti-gambling Christian evangelical voters against the potential expansion of gambling by other Indian tribes and gaming interests in Louisiana and Texas. [snip]
The bottom line is that Christian voters got rolled in what amounted to little more than a sophisticated shell game. They ought to be angry. But then we all ought to be angry. Reading through the documents related to the Indian Affairs investigation is enough to make one want to take a shower. As American Enterprise Institute Scholar Norman Ornstein wrote "I don't think we have had something of this scope, arrogance and sheer venality in our lifetimes. It is building to an explosion, one that could create immense collateral damage within Congress and in coming elections." Ornstein is right, the duplicity and hypocrisy of the scheme is a stunning example of the cynical manipulation of Democracy for money. [snip]
The latest example of the Republican's "bring the whacko's out" strategy has recently been on display in California's special election. There, Gary Marx, a former colleague of Ralph Reed at Century Strategies and Karl Rove's chief henchman charged with getting out the evangelical vote in Ohio and other key battleground states, could be found organizing Christian Evangelical voters. [snip]
My guess is that Marx will almost immediately put those names to good use in his role as executive director of the Judicial Confirmation Network, which is little more than a front for Campaign Solutions, the public relations firm for Bush-Cheney 04, where he is working to organize grassroots support of the President's Supreme Court nominees. And hey, there are always the 06 Congressional elections.
We need to gum up the works of their "Whako Strategy" with their own words and the truth. My hunch is that the Christians will not like discovering that they are being played for chumps.