Conservatives Without Conscience

by John W. Dean

  Texas Republicans, once in control of the Lege, pushed to enact their redistricting plan, while Democrats employed numerous tactical and procedural moves to try to prevent this. At one point, Democratic legislators left the state in droves to prevent Republicans from obtaining the quorum necessary for enacting gerrymandered districts into law. Tom DeLay called the Federal Aviation Administration and demanded they send airplanes out to locate the missing Democratic legislators, dubbed the “Killer D’s” by the media.[*] The Killer D’s could stall only so long, however, and in 2003 the Texas legislature enacted a new redistricting plan. This action was unprecedented; throughout the twentieth century such redistricting had been undertaken only in response to the decennial U.S. Census’s update of population figures. Much of the negotiation took place behind closed doors, in conference committee, with DeLay brokering the deal and insisting the plan meet his approval. DeLay, who personally carried drafts of the new law back and forth between the Texas House and Senate, resisted any and all attempts to make the plan fair, so determined was he to secure every possible advantage for Republicans.[28]

  “By drawing districts that snaked hundreds of miles across various counties,” the NAACP reported, “Republicans drained African American and Latino voters from integrated Democratic districts and replaced them with enough white Republican voters to outnumber remaining white Democratic voters. As a result, DeLay converted a 32-member Texas Congressional delegation that had been evenly divided between the parties into one in which Republicans enjoyed a 10-seat advantage after the 2004 election.”[29] Under the federal Voting Rights Act, Texas was required to submit any changes in its voting laws to the federal government for approval by the Department of Justice. After it sent its 2003 redistricting plan to Washington, five lawyers and two analysts in the department’s Civil Rights Division rejected it in a seventy-three-page memorandum highlighting its flaws. But Bush appointees at the Justice Department rejected the findings of their own experts and approved the highly partisan plan.[30] When opponents of the scheme took it to federal court, they ran aground because of the uncertainty of the law under existing U.S. Supreme Court rulings. It was not until late 2005 that the Supreme Court agreed to hear their objections, which makes it unlikely the issue will be resolved before the 2006 congressional elections. In the past, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court has tried to stay out of such political issues, so it remains uncertain whether the high Court will make a ruling in the case. But everyone should hope that the justices opt to clean up this mess, for its ramifications are national.

  Indeed, the actions of DeLay and his allies in the Texas legislature have already encouraged similar activity (so far unsuccessful) in other states controlled by Republicans, namely Georgia and Colorado. In turn, a few Democrats, relying on the adage that “you can’t play touch football when the other guy is playing tackle,” have proposed that states they now control, such as Illinois, New Mexico, and Louisiana, pursue their own partisan redistricting plans. But so far Democrats have chosen to talk, not to play this game. DeLay’s actions in Texas provided less than a handful of additional votes, but Republicans have shown that with their authoritarian style they can and will govern the House, and the nation, with only the slightest majority.[*] They have maintained control of the House by mastering “the one-vote victory” strategy, which DeLay has made into an art form.

  Although he is not particularly close to Bush II, since he had been openly critical of his father (claiming that moderate Republicans like Bush I were moral compromisers), DeLay is a team player and recognizes the power of the White House, so he has been more than willing to push Bush administration programs. As majority leader, he knew how to count votes and how to twist arms to enact laws with almost no majority support. “Time and again,” the Washington Post reported, “on high-profile bills involving Medicare, education and other programs, [the GOP leaders] have calibrated the likely yeas and neas to the thinnest margin possible, enabling them to push legislation as much to their liking as they can in a narrowly divided and bitterly partisan House.”[31] For example, the Post reported, the 2003 vote on Medicare was 216–215, the Head Start vote was 217–216, and those in favor of providing vouchers for children in the District of Columbia public schools prevailed with a 209–208 vote. By picking up four more votes from Texas in 2004, Republicans gained even greater control. DeLay—and no doubt his successor, John Boehner—held Republican members of the House in line through threats and money and, by playing hardball, demanded and obtained votes when he needed them. But the leaders are not foolish and understand that some moderate members cannot vote for every hard-right measure and survive in office. So the GOP leadership rotates among the 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 played the political game by any means, fair or foul. For example, in 1983, Abramoff launched an attack on Ralph Nader’s efforts to get college campuses to undertake public interest research projects, and to devote part of their activities fee to such purposes. Abramoff sent out materials accusing such public interest groups of promoting leftist political ideals, and of being “instrumental in leading anti-Reagan and anti-free market forces on campuses.” He described these student groups as “a major threat to democracy on American campuses” and as “unethical, undemocratic and unconstitutional.” Nader called Abramoff’s material what it was, “a total smear.”[49] The same year Abramoff formed the purportedly nonpartisan, tax-exempt USA Foundation, obtained funding from leading Republican donors, and then proceeded to violate the law prohibiting such groups from participating in political campaigns. The Washington Post reported that just as the 1984 Reagan reelection campaign was entering its final phase, Abramoff arranged, through his foundation, “more than 100 campus rallies and a possible Rose Garden ceremony on the first anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Grenada.” Abramoff’s letter promoting these events, almost ludicrous because it is so blatantly deceptive, put a facade of legitimacy on what he dubbed “Student Liberation Day.” “I am confident that an impartial study of the contrasts between the Carter/Mondale failure in Iran and the Reagan victory in Grenada will be most enlightening to voters 12 days before the general election,” Abramoff wrote.[50] Earlier that year, Abramoff had “invited his counterpart at the College Democrats, Steve Gersky, to tour the country to debate the issues of the 1984 presidential campaign.” Gersky cordially accepted, and the Republicans even paid for the tour. (One can only imagine where Abramoff found the funds.) But Abramoff chose campuses where he knew he would get a friendly reception, and did not tell Gersky where the debates would be held. When Abramoff spoke, canned applause was piped in. Bill Belk, the outgoing president of the Young Democrats, later mournfully explained Gersky’s failure to win any of these debates: “They set him up.”[51]

  Double High authoritarians are, of course, amoral, and Abramoff has consistently displayed this characteristic. For example, in 1985 he served as the executive director of the Citizens for America, a conservative organization headed by drugstore magnate Lewis Lehrman, who had challenged New York governor Mario Cuomo in a close race in 1982 and still had political ambitions. Lehrman, upon returning from a trip out of the country, discovered he was “boxed out of the bookkeeping” of Citizens for America, notwithstanding being head of the organization. He had his personal lawyer investigate, and later reported, “
It was one big party,” as Abramoff and those he had hired “had gone hog wild.” According to the Washington Post, Abramoff was charged with mismanaging funds, and he and his staff—including “field director” Grover Norquist, who was off in South Africa—were all fired.[52] Nonetheless, a decade later, Abramoff cited his work with Citizens for America prominently in his résumé.[53]