AP: “Bush to Give Up $6,000 Linked to Abramoff”. Which makes it sound like Bush took that amount in personal gifts – when, in fact, the $6,000 is legitimate, lawful donations to the Bush campaign, and the give-back (donations to charity, actually) is just a gesture of putting a xleazy character at arms’ length rather than a sign that the BC04 campaign accepted anything it shouldn’t have.
In a similar vein, I’m guardedly skeptical of the efforts to tie various Democrats to Abramoff to the extent that they just show Democrats taking campaign funds from a lobbyist who was particularly crooked; to get real traction, you either need to show officials taking personal benefits or receiving campaign contributions linked in some improper way to official action.
And while I wholeheartedly with National Review that Tom DeLay should remain stepped-down and that the House GOP needs to use the occasion to enact some real reforms, including reforms of the process by which taxpayer funds are routed to earmarked pet projects (repeat after me: you can’t get money out of politics unless you get politics out of money), I don’t agree with Captain Ed that the Abramoff scandal will decisively shift the balance of power from Congress to the White House and destroy the 2008 presidential aspirations of all current Senators. This scandal stinks and will stink some more, and it will be noticed by voters already sick of runaway spending and coziness with special interests, but it ain’t Watergate and may not even be Abscam.