Well-connected Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff came into the news lately when it turned out he had collected more than $9 million in fees from various Indian tribes during the past two years, although tribal interests faced little political opposition at that time.

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Well-connected Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff came into the news lately when it turned out he had collected more than $9 million in fees from various Indian tribes during the past two years, although tribal interests faced little political opposition at that time. (He was dumped by his firm, Greenberg Traurig, which cited "personal transactions and related conduct which are unacceptable to the firm." Abramoff responded with a statement noting that Washington lobbying "is different from other areas in the practice of law." Indeed.) But while Abramoff is far from Washington's first corrupt lobbyist, he's among a troika of right-wing operatives who exemplify a more recent trend: the political decadence of late-stage conservatism. Along with anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and political consultant Ralph Reed, Abramoff came of age at the dawn of Reaganism, helping to stage an early-1980s putsch at the College Republicans that evicted moderates...

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