Most Republicans in DC seem to have the strategic wherewithal to get as far away from Jack Abramoff as humanly possible. Most of those who’ve taken his money have gotten rid of it. Those who knew him personally are denouncing him forcefully. But Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) seems to be the only person in the country taking a contrarian approach to the massive lobbying scandal.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., came to the defense of disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff on Monday, saying he’s a good person who’s been unjustly criticized.
“They’re portraying Jack as a monster. I see him more as a good person who’s done bad things and has to be punished for doing bad things,” Rohrabacher, a longtime friend of Abramoff, said in a phone interview.
“I think that he obviously has done some things that are wrong and illegal and he’s going to have to pay the price for it,” Rohrabacher said. “I think that a lot of other things that have been characterized as corruption on the part of Abramoff are actually standard operating procedures for lobbying in Washington, D.C. arranging trips and things like that. So I think that he’s received a lot of unjust criticism.”
This strikes me as breathtakingly dumb. Has Rohrabacher even followed the Abramoff case? Phrases like “good person” don’t belong in the same sentence as Jack Abramoff unless the speaker prefaces it with “he’s obviously not a.” We’re talking about a guy who just pled guilty to felony counts of fraud, public corruption, and tax evasion as part of a deal that included many other charges. Abramoff is a disgraced sleaze; the only person who doesn’t seem aware of that is Rohrabacher.
For that matter, as far as public relations pitches go, for a sitting Republican House member to describe Abramoff’s corrupt deals as “standard operating procedures” on Capitol Hill actually makes the Dems’ arguments for them. Indeed, Rohrabacher has been doing this a lot lately — over the weekend, he told the WaPo that Abramoff-like deals have “happened every day in Washington.”
Rohrabacher seems oblivious to the fact that it makes the scandal worse. Far be it for me to help congressional Republicans spin the biggest corruption scandal on the Hill in decades, but shouldn’t they argue that Abramoff was a treacherous aberration, not the kind of corruption that’s become commonplace under GOP leadership?