Bloggledygook: Attention! GOP Hypocrites, Please Form A Line To The Right.

It's getting so you can't swing a dead baby seal without hitting another GOP apparatchik in the midst of existential ethical crisis. It's not illegality we're talking about, but a continuing pattern that reinforces the stereotype we carry about a certain kind of conservative.

That certain kind is not the pro-business, reliably small-l libertarian, socially agnostic (though reliably discreet and prone to intransigence with regards to social equity), but the kind of conservative that first raised its brow during the Reagan presidency and now has the second Bush Administration in its thrall. It's the way right side of the Republican party that sets itself as morally superior while acting against their rhetoric in cliched, closeted manner.

Like Bill Bennett, for instance. Or Tom Delay. (These two, I have pointed out in the last few days, have enough going on for us to dislike them, just not what's been going lately).

Or, drum roll, please... Ralph Reed, Rick Santorum's evil(er) twin.

Reed could in some ways be the love child of Bennett and Phyllis Schafley, what with his former leadership of the Christian Coalition and his strong, principled stance against gambling. Or rather, his sham, hypocritical stance against gambling:

Ralph Reed, who has condemned gambling as a "cancer on the American body politic," quietly worked five years ago to kill a proposed ban on Internet wagering — on behalf of a company in the online gambling industry.

Reed, now a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Georgia, helped defeat the congressional proposal despite its strong support among many Republicans and conservative religious groups. Among them: the national Christian Coalition organization, which Reed had left three years earlier to become a political and corporate consultant.

It gets better. Reed did his work on behalf of eLottery, a company that sells state lottery tickets online, and at the time a client of lobbyist Jack Abramoff. eLottery ponied up $25,000 for a golfing trip to Scotland for Tom DeLay, arranged by Abramoff just weeks before the bill came up for a vote. Abramoff is currently under indictment for fraud and is under investigation by the Justice Department. And we really don't have to mention some of Abramoff's friends, do we?

But Abramoff isn't the point man here. It's Reed, that bastion of morality, that clear, pure voice of right living:

The campaign against the Internet gambling ban was one of several successful enterprises in which Abramoff and Reed worked together.

The Choctaws paid for Reed's work in 1999 and 2000 to defeat a lottery and video poker legislation in Alabama. In 2001 and 2002, another Abramoff client that operates a casino, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, put up the money for Reed's efforts in Louisiana and Texas to eliminate competition from other tribes. Reed was paid about $4 million for that work.

[...]

Reed and Abramoff have been friends since the early 1980s. That's when Abramoff, as chairman of the national College Republicans organization, hired Reed to be his executive director. Later, Reed introduced Abramoff to the woman he married.

In an interview last month about his consulting business, Reed declined to elaborate on his personal and professional relationships with Abramoff. At one point, Reed was asked if Abramoff had hired him to work for clients other than Indian tribes.

Reed's answer: "Not that I can recall."

Well, Ralphie, let's refresh your memory.

When U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) first introduced the Internet gambling ban, in 1997, he named among its backers the executive director of the Christian Coalition: Ralph Reed.

In remarks published in the Congressional Record, Goodlatte said, "This legislation is supported across the spectrum, from Ralph Reed to Ralph Nader."

But Reed's role in the ban's failure three years later was a well-kept secret, even from Goodlatte. That's in part because Reed's Duluth-based Century Strategies — a public affairs firm that avoids direct contact with members of Congress — is not subject to federal lobbying laws that would otherwise require the company to disclose its activities.

"We were not aware that Reed was working against our bill," Kathryn Rexrode, a spokeswoman for Goodlatte, said last week.

Oh but he was. And he was using his connections to religious groups to scuttle a bill that was supporting the ban:

Federal records show eLottery spent $1.15 million to fight the anti-gambling measure during 2000. Of that, $720,000 went to Abramoff's law firm at the time, Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds of Washington. According to documents filed with the secretary of the U.S. Senate, Preston Gates represented no other client on the legislation.

Reed's job, according to his campaign manager, Jared Thomas, was to produce "a small run of direct mail and other small media efforts" to galvanize religious conservatives against the 2000 measure. Aides declined to provide reporters with examples of Reed's work. Nor would Thomas disclose Reed's fees.

This almost as good as Jimmy Sawggart and the hooker. On second thought, it's better because Swaggart was just a religious nut who couldn't keep it in his pants. Reed is running for public office and has had a hand in the emergence of religious fundamentalist influence in the GOP.

There is no evidence that Reed has done anything illegal, but this is still delicious. Reed's story is emblematic of a party that has either lost, forgotten, or never believed in its core principles. For many principled conservatives, this is--or at least should be--another indication that their party has been taken over by Born Agains who talk a good game, but demonstrate how they actually operate.

If Democrats were smart, they would stop thumping battles that they have no chance of winning and instead focus attention on the growing list of scandals in the GOP leadership while pointing out to moderate Republicans that their party no longer is the defender of small government (highway bill), fiscal responsibility (record deficits), individual liberty (PATRIOT ACT) and ethics in government (Armstrong Williams and NCLB).

And religious Republicans should start asking themselves if the whole compassionate conservative talk was just a way of hoodwinking them into voting for candidates who mock their beliefs by their very actions.