Conservatives Without Conscience

moderates in the ranks, not forcing all of them to comply with every vote, but using them one at a time when one vote is needed for victory, as well as when voting on rules. The system is blatantly imperious, completely undemocratic, and conspicuously authoritarian. Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, with two decades of service in the House, correctly stated that the “House of Representatives is no longer a deliberative body.”[32]

The K Street Project: Jack Abramoff and His Friends

DeLay, his later successor John Boehner, and key authoritarian cronies have also assembled what may prove the most corrupt lobbying operation in Washington since the “Ohio Gang” was run out of their infamous “little green house” at 1625 K Street in 1923.[33] K Street, a wide boulevard lined with office buildings in downtown Washington, D.C., is the corridor where many powerful lobbying firms base their operations. When Republicans took control of Congress in 1995, one of their first moves was to seize control of the lobbying sector.[*] When he became Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich deputized then majority whip Tom DeLay to make sure House Republicans were getting their share of campaign dollars from K Street, and to inform the lobbying firms and trade associations that if they wanted access to GOP leaders, they should hire Republicans to lobby.[34] This undertaking soon became known as the K Street Project. DeLay was assisted by Pennsylvania Republican Senator Richard Santorum, who regularly approved the names of people to be hired by the K Street firms, and John Boehner “formed his alliances on K Street when he served as chairman of the GOP conference from 1995 to 1998.”[35] To make certain lobbying firms were, in fact, hiring conservative Republicans, Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and the project’s coarchitect, also constantly monitored the operation.[*] “We don’t want non-ideological people on K Street, we want conservative Republicans on K Street,” Norquist stated.[36]

But the K Street Project was about more than just finding jobs for Republicans; it was about money—the big money needed to maintain a Republican majority. “Washington conservatives and the Republican leadership in Congress,” wrote informed political observer John Judis, were pursuing “a strategy for retaining Republican control of Congress and for winning the White House.” That strategy, Judis reported, was to turn K Street, and the business interests it represents, “into loyal soldiers in the new Republican revolution. In exchange for legislative favors, Gingrich, DeLay, and other congressional leaders expected that the businesses would provide funds to keep them in office.”[37] When lobbying firms or special interest groups hired someone to the Republican leadership’s disliking, they were punished. For example, in 1998, when the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) hired former Democratic representative Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma to head its Washington office, DeLay effectively vetoed the hire. “First, DeLay put out the word that McCurdy would not be welcome in Republican leadership offices,” reported Lou Dubose and Jan Reid, which would clearly make McCurdy an ineffective lobbyist. When EIA refused to fire McCurdy, DeLay upped the stakes by pulling from the House calendar consideration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, an essential piece of legislation for protecting intellectual property on the Internet that a coalition of industry people, including EIA, had worked on for two years. When an end run through the Senate was attempted, DeLay again blocked the bill when it came to the House. “When DeLay used his position as majority whip to block its final passage in the House, he sent K Street a loud, crude message,” Dubose and Reid observed. “He also probably broke the law.”[38] Extortion is not something that registers easily with a Double High authoritarian who is busy manipulating the world.

With impunity DeLay “regularly engage[d] in pay-to-play lawmaking and flagrant abuses of power,” one reporter noted.[39] DeLay was taking names and making lists, not only of who was being hired to lobby, but of how much money was being contributed to Republicans. Rumor in Washington was that DeLay had “a little black book” he kept on his desk, which he opened whenever a lobbyist came to see him to determine whether he was pleased with the latest contribution made by the organization the lobbyist represented. If DeLay was not happy, he would not be particularly helpful to the lobbyist. When he was satisfied, though, he let it be known through favorable action. Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter did not believe the gossip, so he asked DeLay about it. “DeLay not only confirmed the story,” Alter later wrote, “he showed me the book.” DeLay claimed his time was limited, explained Alter. “Why should he open his door to people who were not on his team?”[40]

As a result of the embarrassing indictment of Tom DeLay and the guilty plea of the man with whom he had worked most closely on K Street, Jack Abramoff, Republicans were forced to take a few preemptive measures. Those campaigning for his job as majority leader—Representatives Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Boehner (R-OH), and John Shadegg (R-AZ)—all pledged to lighten up on the K Street Project’s extortion racket. Yet Roll Call reported that all of them were, at the same time, relying on their K Street contacts to help them win.[41] Even friendly observers acknowledged that Republicans were doing little to change their ways. “The truth is that none of this will truly reduce corruption any more than the previous lobbying reform did,” according to the editors of the Wall Street Journal. “If the Members were serious about reform,” the Journal advised, “they’d put in place rules that restrict themselves. They could insist, for example, that at least three days pass after final legislation is drafted, so they could actually read the bills before they vote on them. Or they could eliminate ‘earmarks,’ which have proliferated under GOP rule and are now a preferred way that members pay off lobbyists.”[42]

Once Boehner became majority leader, even the proposed cosmetic changes were dropped, and it was back to business as usual. Republicans have, for all practical purposes, effectively imposed one-party rule on Washington. “It is breathtaking,” said Thomas Mann, a senior scholar at the Brookings Institution. “It’s the most hard-nosed effort I’ve seen to use one’s current majority to enlarge and maintain that majority.”[43] Republicans have accomplished one-party rule by “patronage, cronyism and corruption,” observed Paul Krugman of the New York Times,[44] who might well have been describing Jack Abramoff’s mantra.

Abramoff, who contributed mightily toward one-party dominance, is another poster boy for Double High authoritarian conservatism, a disposition that has been evident from the outset of his career. He entered Republican politics at a relatively high level, through the College Republicans. In 1980, while an undergraduate at Brandeis, he met Grover Norquist, who was then an MBA student at Harvard. The two teamed up, with Abramoff taking the more visible role as head of the Massachusetts Federation of College Republican Clubs, and produced over ten thousand youth votes for Reagan. This turned out to be a significant contribution, because although Reagan carried Massachusetts, it was by only three thousand votes.[45] After graduation, Abramoff and Norquist headed for Reagan’s Washington, and in 1981, Abramoff sought the chairmanship of the College Republican National Committee (CRNC), spending ten thousand dollars of his personal funds to campaign for a job that did not pay much more. To win the chairmanship, Franklin Foer of the New Republic reported, “Abramoff and his campaign manager, Norquist, promised their leading competitor, Amy Moritz, the job of CRNC executive director if she dropped out of the race. Moritz took the bait, but it turned out that Abramoff had made the promise with his fingers crossed. Norquist took the executive director job.”[46] The jobs brought prestige to two young conservatives on the make and plugged them into the Republican Party power network. At that time, heavy-hitting conservative millionaires, like beermeister Joseph Coors and Nixon’s former treasury secretary, William Simon, were providing increasingly large sums of money to attract young people to conservatism. Abramoff would serve as CRNC’s chairman from 1981 to 1985, one of the longest terms since the founding of the organization in 1892. [47]

“The [College Republican National] Committee is the place were Republican strategists learn their craft and acquire their knack for making their Democratic opponents look like disorganized children,” Foer wrote of his firsthand look at the “importuning, backstabbing and horse trading” of the 2005 contest for its chairmanship. “Walking through the halls of the [2005] convention,” Foer reported, “it was easy to see the genesis of tactics deployed in the [2000] Florida recount and by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth [in 2004]. Republicans learn how to fight hard against Democrats by practicing on one another first.” Grover Norquist advised 2005 conventioneers, “There are no rules in a knife fight.”[*] [48]

Abramoff’s dominating personality was likewise apparent early in his career. As chairman of the College Republicans while a student at Georgetown University Law Center,[*] he