Abramoff Money and Dems
An earlier post took the NRSC to task for claiming on their website that ""Forty of forty five members of the Democrat Senate Caucus took money from Jack Abramoff."
Not true; Abramoff personally gave money to GOPers only.
NRSC spokesman Brian Nick calls it a typo and correctly points out that other pages on the site add thge words "and associates and tribal clients" when writing of Abramoffian contributions to Dems.
Still, is it really fair to say that "40 of the 45 members of the Senate Democrat Caucus have taken money from Abramoff, his associates, and Indian tribe clients."
Abramoff AND the others? No -- just the others. Not Abramoff.
Abramoff himself did not donate a penny of his personal money to Democrats, so far as we can tell. So it'd be accurate to say that "Abramoff's associates and tribal clients" gave to Dems.
Some of the "Abramoff-related" money linked to Dems comes from Greenberg Traurig's political action committee. Greenberg is a huge bipartisan legal/lobby firm. It regularly gives money to members of both parties.
Abramoff had no hand in the PAC's donation distribution, according to Greenberg. So is Greenberg money really Abramoff money? (To be fair, the same question can be posed to Dems who say Greenberg contributions to GOPers are inherently tainted.)
Also: Rep. Roy Blunt today joined Tom DeLay in returning his Abramoff contributions. Sort of. His office says he'll only return the $8.5K donated to his PAC directly from Abramoff and he'll keep the money donated by associates and tribal clients.
Doesn't that undermine the GOP argument, at least a little bit, that the entire Abramoff money network was tainted and that Dems are smeared as much as GOPers? [MARC AMBINDER]
Not true; Abramoff personally gave money to GOPers only.
Whether a statement actually comports with the facts is irrelevant.
Anything repeated often enough becomes 'true'.
This notion -- that 'Forty of forty five members of the Democrat Senate Caucus took money from Jack Abramoff' -- will be 'true' by week's end.
No it won't. And even if it is - the prison terms and ethics censures will show the truth and who is really tainted. All Republicans, I bet.
Can we get a link to this story? We need to be spreading the truth to this BS. Even Feingold is getting smeared. We all need to step up and set the record stratight.
Excellent point. This GOP talking point won't fly (except with the hard-core Bush-bots). Anyone who believes that Abramoff was a bi-partisan player has never read a thing about Jack Abramoff (or at least has failed to retain what they've read). I know a lobbyist or two, and sure, they are generally acquainted with both sides of the aisle, and most major corporate types tend to spread the donations around more or less to both sides, particularly when you're talking about the Senate (where the minority retains some power). But Abramoff clearly was more than a lobbyist - he was an activist and an advocate for expanding GOP influence.
Bipartisanship just wasn't his bag, baby.
I don't buy this crap for one second. Byron Dorgan has already given back his Abramoff contributions. The party of lies, hypocrisy, political corruption,and welfare-state dependence even at the expense of theocuntry inoder to gain and maintain power are not immune to this scandal.
Denocrats are better at hding their scandals because of their left-wing media allies.
Are you at all familiar with how money moves through DC? Abramoff was a power and influence broker. I fail to see the difference in his suggestive influence filling Dem coffers and his personally writing the check. Those Dems receiving their share of the $1.5M he brought them certainly drew no distinction.
Awww yes, bipartisanship makes the donations okay, but if you only give the vast majority of your money to one party it's wrong. As we all know, bipartisanship reigns when unions, civil trial lawyers, and other groups give 98% of their funds to Democrats.
Abramoff spread the wealth and both parties took the money. This will be just like Enron, the Dems in Congress will scream and yell a bit at first, but as it comes out that they were playing footsie with Abramoff, just like they were playing footsie with Enron, they'll soon let it fade away.
The last two or three comments on this site are obviously conservatives, who like most conservatives, are so biased that they are blind to facts. Those who claim the mainstream media has a "left wing" bias only believe that based on their personal bias. Most liberals I know don't like the mainstream media because they think it is run by corporations that are right-leaning and are too afraid of right-wing accusations of bias that they go out of their way to appease the right. Abramoff was only interested in giving money to Republicans. Democrats aren't perfect, but are far more ethical than Republicans.
In the interest of "fair and balanced" communication, let's just keep in mind that accepting gifts under lawful circumstances, whether Republican or Democrat, is not a crime--or even unethical. None of us knows what the ongoing investigation(s) will turn up. Illegalities, if any, will lie in whether and to what extent it can be determined that services were provided by the legislators on behalf of the contributors. If there were quid pro quos provided, my attitude is "I don't care what their party affiliation is--put them under the jail."
Stay tuned,
Rod Pirtle
What, basically democrats but republicans as well are forgetting is that just a few months ago when the democrats were going after frist the press found many instances of both parties listing trips and gifts paid for by lobbyists. Of course these politicians got to go back as far as 8 years ago and change the listing of their gifts to something other than a gift from a lobbyist. Maxine Waters a democrat from California refused to relist her trip or refund the money. Strangely, but pretty much as expected, the outrage concerning her gifts has not even been mentioned by the democrats. Fair and Balanced would be penalizing all politicians who took gifts, past and present, equally. Relisting should not have been allowed, they were submitted as gifts from lobbyists only to change overnight to something totally different.