DID JOHN McCAIN HELP DO IN RALPH REED? WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE OTHER ABRAMOFF CONSPIRATORS LIKE NEY, BURNS AND DOOLITTLE?

Tuesday Ralph Reed's political career went down in flames as his once sure-thing bid to become Lt. Governor of Georgia ended... with a thud. Unfortunately for Reed, formerly the CEO of the Christian Coalition and then the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, between the rime he decided to run and the time of the Republican primary this week, he was exposed as part of the Jack Abramoff Conspiracy to bilk tens of millions of dollars from American Indian tribes for Republican candidates-- and for their own pockets. Most elected Republicans in the state feared a Reed win in the primary could doom in entire party ticket in November.

Most observers feel that the core GOP primary voters reacted badly to the inherent hypocrasy of Reed's awkward position and that that was the cause of his loss. Once the money-quote from the Abramoff camp hit the mass media-- "the wackos [who] get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees. Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them"-- it was all downhill for Reed who could never shake the hypocrite label.

Over on the extreme right of the GOP-- starting in Reed's camp-- blame for his loss is being laid at the feet of Karl Rove's candidate to succeed Bush in the White House: John McCain. According to far right wing propagandist Rich Lowry, writing in Wednesday's National Review Online relatively moderate Republicans in the suburbs (i.e.- ones who have never participated in a cross burning) broke heavily not so much for Cagle as against Reed. "The Reed camp," writes Lowry, "blames John McCain for playing payback for his 2000 primary defeat with a campaign of leaks, and the press, of course, was happy to pile on."

In the end Reed took only 46% of the vote. And the question everyone should be thinking about is how this will impact on the re-election campaigns of Abramoff's other major collaborators, not necessarily the second and third tier recipients of his tainted money, but the big players who have been at the heart of the Republican Culture of Corruption that has pervaded Washington, particularly Conrad Burns (R-MT), Bob Ney (R-OH), Tom DeLay (R-TX), John Doolittle (R-CA), Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Dick Pombo (R-CA), J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), Don Young (R-AK), and Tom Feeney (R-FL). A clean sweep of these miscreants would be one small and necessary step towards bringing a semblance of honesty and integrity back to Congress.