the liberal avenger mentioned something that has been banging around the blogisphere over the past few days. as the noose tightens around abramoff and his network of corruption, some commentators have tried to make it seem like abramoff may implicate members of both parties. but really that doesn't seem to be the case.
as jane hamsher points out, it appears that abramoff contributed zero dollars to any democratic candidate [note: the permalink isn't working that well, scroll down until you see the "GOP EXCLUSIVE!!!" heading]. from what i can find, abramoff's lobbying was pretty partisan in nature, he really was central to the GOP political machine and had little direct contact with the democrats. (think progress has a handy chart which documents the connects of anyone either directly or indirectly connected to abramoff)
some right wingers nevertheless insist that democrats are involved. but their arguments all revolved around connects between abramoff's clients and democratic politicians, not abramoff himself. (e.g.) that distinction is important. while the dealings with abramoff now appear to be criminal, dealings with his clients aren't necessarily corrupt. if abramoff was defrauding an indian tribe of millions of dollars through his lobbying, the fact that a democrat may have accepted a campaign contribution from the victim of the crime does not mean the democrat was part of the plan. of course, the democrat could be implicated, but the contribution alone doesn't really show anything is wrong.
perhaps somewhere out there someone has drawn a direct connection between abramoff and a democratic candidate. if so, i have no problem with that democrat being brought down with all the others. but i just haven't found such a connection yet. on the whole, abramoff seemed to deal directly with republicans, not democrats, even if he dealt with some of the same people who also had dealings with democrats.
that's not to say that i think democratic politicians are pure and corruption free. but it doesn't surprise me that an influence peddling scandal would largely bypass the democrats these days. considering that the democrats are a minority party, have been pretty effectively shut out of influential positions, and, for the most part, have just acted like a bunch of big wussies lately, it stands to reason that people who wanted to buy influence would not pay much attention to the dems. they just don't have all that much influence to sell.
the fact that the abramoff scandal is mostly, if not exclusively, a story of republican corruption, is really just a testament to their political success.
