Give Us Loyalty or We'll Give You Death

The GOP, with their "love it or leave it" approach to Washington politics (the latest being threats made to Rhode Island GOP senatorLincoln Chafee for daring to suggest that he wasn't comfortable with John Bolton's nomination), you'd think they'd take more care to keep people who have the poop on them happy. After all, people who subscribe to that ideology aren't going to be too happy about being stabbed in the back. Enter Jack Abramoff, corrupt lobbyist. Now that his Republican cronies are scrambling to get away from him, he's proving to be less than willing to play fall guy. Newsweek shows that DeLay might be in big, big trouble. And that fellow corrupt good ol' boys like Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt better consider betraying DeLay, too, lest they pay a price later.


"As stories of [Jack Abramoff's] alleged excess dribble out--including the emergence of e-mails showing he derisively referred to his Native American clients as "monkeys" and "idiots"--some of Abramoff's old friends have abandoned him and treated him like a pariah. They claim they knew nothing of his questionable lobbying tactics. So last week, glumly sitting at his corner table at Signatures, the tony downtown restaurant he owns that remains his last redoubt, Abramoff lashed out in frustration.

"Everybody is lying," Abramoff told a former colleague. There are e-mails and records that will implicate others, he said. He was noticeably caustic about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. For years, nobody on Washington's K Street corridor was closer to DeLay than Abramoff. They were an unlikely duo. DeLay, a conservative Christian, and Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew, traveled the world together and golfed the finest courses. Abramoff raised hundreds of thousands for DeLay's political causes and hired DeLay's aides, or kicked them business, when they left his employ. But now DeLay, too, has problems--in part because of overseas trips allegedly paid for by Abramoff's clients. In response, DeLay and his aides have said repeatedly they were unaware of Abramoff's behind-the-scenes financing role. "Those S.O.B.s," Abramoff said last week about DeLay and his staffers, according to his luncheon companion. "DeLay knew everything. He knew all the details."

Whoa.