Stop Me Before I Vote Again

I almost -- almost -- have to feel sorry for the Democrats. Here's this incredibly juicy Abramoff story unfolding, and they are clearly just not gonna find any way to spin it as a "Republican scandal" -- a phrase which is being mumbled perseveratively by the toothless faithful over on Daily Kos these days in the the machine-gun way old Irish ladies used the repeat the Ave Maria. God has left the building, but the congregation are still robotically, fervently at prayer.

The first line of defense was a positively Scholastic distinction between money given by Saint Jack himself, and money given by the tribes who were Abramoff's hapless clients. The Kosniks loved this one -- it appealed to their wonkish mastery of technical minutiae. Jack himself -- pay no attention to those tribes behind the curtain -- didn't write any checks to Democrats, so hey, "we" are in the clear. (Incidentally, I love the way Kosniks and other fleas on the donkey carcass refer to the party as "we". Yankees fans do the same thing -- Mr. Steinbrenner's team is always "we". There's a lesson in this.)

Unfortunately, and to the surprise of every three-year-old, it soon became clear that the public was not going to be very interested in this convoluted pettifoggery. Yikes! What do "we" have to fall back on?

Well, gotta hand it to Rahm Emanuel -- even when he's holding a really bad hand, he'll bluff like a sonofabitch:

"He's not an aberration," said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, head of the House Democratic campaign effort, referring to Mr. Abramoff. "He's a super-sized version of what you get when you put the K Street project on steroids."

You heard it here first, folks. Hot-button issue for '06 will be ... the K street project. Dad has just been downsized, Mom is working 25 hours a week at Wal-Mart, they've got no insurance, and their son Joey is starting his third tour in Iraq. But they'll lie awake nights fuming about the K street project.

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