In "Danger ahead?" The Arizona Republic writes that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., faces a GOP backlash if he pushes his committee's investigation too far into what has become one of the biggest lobbying scandals in U.S. history, asserts an article in the current edition of the Texas Observer, an Austin-based magazine. McCain is the Senate's Indian Affairs Committee chairman.
In an article titled "Senatorial Courtesy," author Lou DuBose argues that aggressive pursuit by McCain of accusations that Jack Abramoff and a partner may have defrauded Indian tribes of $82 million in lobbying bills could ruin other Republicans and, thus, McCain's own standing in the GOP as he considers running for president in 2008. DuBose writes that's because at "the bottom" of the inquiry "is a second scandal that extends beyond the $82 million Mike Scanlon and Jack Abramoff took from the six tribes they were working for."
"Abramoff and Scanlon did more than enrich themselves. They enriched the Republican Party, he writes. "The personal contributions they made, such as the $500,000 check Scanlon wrote to the Republican National Governors Association in 2002, were derived from illicit billing of Indian clients." The list of other subjects the senator would have to take on, DuBose writes, include President Bush's Interior Secretary, Gale Norton; Bush's 2004 Southeastern campaign director, Ralph Reed, who once ran the Christian Coalition; the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee; and the Republican National Committee. Also, he says, "(House) Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, had his hands in the Indians' pockets. . . ."So it's difficult, perhaps impossible, for McCain to conduct the investigation he promised a year ago. Unless he decides he's not a Republican candidate for the presidency in 2008," the articles asserts.
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