Happy birthday tricky Dick

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive -- and he was, all the way to the end -- we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.

That was Nixon's style -- and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.

The modern Republicans, from their earliest incarnation in the 60's, starting with still active operatives like Morton Blackwell and Karl Rove to the next generation of Abramoff, Norquist and Reed, have always operated as dirty tricksters, and corrupt power brokers. The modern Republican Party is not, and never has been, the party of Ronald Reagan, not really. It's the party of Richard Nixon.

Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist came together as a power in the College Republicans during the Reagan years. Blackwell, Rove, Atwater, and many others powerful operatives and strategists had cut their teeth there, as well, but these guys came in at the beginning of the heady Reagan years and they were fueled by the belief that they were on the permanent winning side of history. The triumverate of Norquist, Abramoff and Reed is legendary --- and they are all implicated in the burgeoning Jack Abramoff/Tom DeLay scandal.

They have come to represent the three most important wings of the modern conservative movement --- the Christian Right (Reed), the movement ideologues (Norquist) and the big money boys (Abramoff.) They are the Republican party. And they are all corrupt.

Reed is a total phony. I had long assumed, as most people probably did, that he came up through the Christian Right, a conservative Christian who got into politics through religion. He sure does look the part, doesn't he? This, of course, is not true. He wasn't "born again" until 1983, long after he had committed himself to Republican politics and proved himself to be a ruthless, unprincipled operative. He helped to create the Christian Coalition, it didn't create him. In fact, the Christian Right doesn't really exist independently of the Party, it is a wholly owned subsidiary, consciously created and nurtured as a Republican voting block.
(Morton Blackwell famously gave the Moral Majority its name.) Ralph Reed is now entering electoral politics himself, making the big move. He's probably the most dangerous Republican in America.

Norquist, as most people know is a great admirer of Stalin's tactics. He's quoted as saying to Reed back in the College Republican days:

[Stalin] was running the personnel department while Trotsky was fighting the White Army. When push came to shove for control of the Soviet Union, Stalin won. Trotsky got an ice ax through his skull, while Stalin became head of the Soviet Union. He understood that personnel is policy.

To that end, Norquist more than anyone else has ensured through carefully constructed alliances that movement ideologues like himself peppered the Republican power structure to the extent that over time, they have come to define it. This is why people like John Bolton, who has no more business being a diplomat than does the Rude Pundit, have become mainstream Republicans, even though they are clearly radical. He has made sure that Republicans are interdependent on each other through money and influence and that the money and influence flow through him and his allies.

Norquist is the truest of true believers, but he understands the importance of certain other inducements to keep people in line. Tom DeLay and Norquist created the K Street project and it's been a rousing success. Abramoff and DeLay were the guys who offered those needed inducements when true belief and solidarity weren't enough. Delay wielded the hammer and Abramoff (among others) offered the goodies. This is how they hold the GOP majority together. Ask Nick Smith how that works.

It's not surprising that Abramoff is the weak link in this. He was the front man back in the college republican days, but he doesn't seem to have been a real strategist in the way that Reed, with his ruthless single mindedness was or Norquist with his long term Soviet style political vision. In fact, the strangest thing about Abramoff is his almost decade long movie producing career that resulted in only two movies being made --- Dolph Lundgren's "Red Scorpion" and "Red Scorpion II" --- both of which were co-produced by his brother, a successful show business attorney. This is an odd chapter in Abramoff's life. It's hard to know why he was unable to parlay himself a real career in Hollywood, except to wonder if maybe Hollywood, for all its faults, just isn't as easily bought off as his pals in the conservative movement. After all, these kind of perks are just standard in the Entertainment industry and can't buy you much of anything at all (from Foer's article in TNR):

Over time, Abramoff's media management grew more sophisticated, and he dispensed largesse across conservative journalism. His junkets didn't just comprise meetings and site visits, they also included plenty of recreation time. Trips to the Choctaw Reservation, for instance, featured gambling at the Silver Star resort and rounds on a lush new golf course. Clint Bolick recalls, "I left the trip early, because it seemed to be so much about golf and gambling, activities I'm not much into." As an artful Washington schmoozer, Abramoff would go even further that. One former Washington Times staffer told me that Abramoff's practice invited his family to watch the circus and a Bruce Springsteen concert from its box at the MCI Center. (By my count, six Washington Times editors and writers attended Abramoff trips.)


Abramoff came back to Washington when his pals came to power in 1994. They suddenly had it all; their triumphant public leader, Newt Gingrich, was even considering a run for the presidency in 1996. (The ever humble Newt was quoted as saying, "Am I going to have to get into this thing?") This was the time to put into place their plans for a permanent Republican establishment ("personnel is policy"), with the power of big money behind them. The problem is that Abramoff got greedy, and so did his little college republican friends. Both Norquist and Reed have been named in the various scandals, right along with Delay. Everybody seems to be hold their breath waiting to see if this thing takes down The Hammer, but the undercurrent of excitement is really whether it will render Norquist, Reed and others impotent over time as the scandal unfolds. It's possible. These guys have always had the problem of hubris and premature triumpalism. They operate on a very emotional level that is a weakness. And they are, of course, incredibly greedy.