Tonto's Revenge

Call it Tonto's revenge: The outrageous rip-off of Native American tribes by a top Republican lobbyist is leading inexorably to a reckoning for the allegedly morally superior religious and political right.

"I don't think we have had something of this scope, arrogance and sheer venality in our lifetimes," Norman J. Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute wrote in Roll Call. "It is building to an explosion, one that could create immense collateral damage within Congress and in coming elections."

Selling firewater to the natives--or in this case charging them $82 million for government breaks on slot machine and other gaming licenses--is not exactly what the high-minded prophets of the Republican revolution promised. And to see behind the scenes as Christian right superstar Ralph Reed, bought off by top Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, dupes his grass-roots "pro-family" followers into unwittingly supporting casino-rich Indian tribes under the guise of anti-gambling initiatives is to glimpse moral corruption of biblical proportion.

Reed, now a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Georgia, at first denied knowing the $4 million he acknowledges receiving from Abramoff and his closest associate, public-relations expert Michael Scanlon, to run the pseudo anti-gambling campaigns in the South came from tribes hoping to retain local monopolies for themselves. Once the investigation picked up steam this past summer, however, he changed his mind and said he was assured that the tribal money didn’t come directly from casino proceeds--a hair-splitting attempt at face-saving ethics, indeed, since the goal of the payments was so clearly to benefit the casinos.

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