The Abramoff Affair in itself is not much of an issue; Jack Abbamoff, Michael Scanlon and Ralph Reed were just a trio of get rich quick lobbyist crooks. The importance was that the investigation into the Indian Casino scam opened up the door on how these Right-wing lunatics took over America and held it for 12 long years.
Unlike Barry Goldwater rallying conservatives in the 1960’s with an intellectual look and book, Ronald Reagan used simplistic sound bites and emotional blather so well that the ideological Right sucked it up so intensely they drove themselves into a rabid war stance, a stance to create a one party system in America in perpetuity.
In 1993, three of these little known Reagan activists; Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed took to the streets organizing loud angry ideological protests. They were so young and so angry and so mean they made the peace activists of the late 60’s seem sleepy. All were also students of the Newt Gringrich school of offensive offense. They whipped up their constituents with rhetoric they literally screamed from blow horns, microphones and obnoxious signs. Total War Against the Left! Destroy the Marxist Democrats! Taxation is Theft! Take no Prisoners! Liberal Communist Atheists! Run Them Back to Red China! Liberal Democrate Socialists! Destroy Them by Any Means! All as loud and as horribly obnoxious as it gets, brownshirts with red ties.
On the first Tuesday of November 1994 with the Gingrich Revolution becoming reality rather than just a study in bomb throwing, these three young men were instantly catapulted to the top of the ideological heap in Washington. When Gingrich became Speaker his first act was to change the process of seniority chairmanships from time spent and gravitas earned, to a system of his personal appointments of only the most hardcore Right-wing ideologues who would do his bidding without question.
Radical Dick Armey from Texas was Majority leader, and the most extreme Right-wing lunatic in Congress, Tom DeLay became Majority Whip, who quickly earned the nickname The Hammer. for his ability to pound out massive dollars from corporations for conservative causes and canditates. For the sake of brevity, I have to leave Newt and Dick for another day to get to the meat of this matter.