Ah yes, I’ve been waiting for this all year. Finally, as the Abramoff-Scanlon-Norquist-Reed Casino Shakedown Scandal gains momentum, some are beginning to wonder if a close acquaintence of all these gents named Karl Rove might have had some idea what was going on. Last week my colleague The Moose cited a Texas Observer article by Rove-watcher Lou Dubose reminding readers of lots of little favors the Bush White House performed for Abramoff and Norquist and their clients (both men, of course, especially Norquist, were early and avid backers of W. for president in 2000). And everybody knows Ralph Reed has been a big-time Bush-Rove favorite who helped create the Christian-K Street coalition which saved W.’s bacon against John McCain in 2000, and who was allowed to test-drive the GOP’s state-of-the-art Get Out the Vote strategy as Republican Party chairman in Georgia in 2002.But I come at this issue from a slightly different perspective. When it first became apparent that the Texas scam of Reed taking Abramoff-generated Indian Casino money to run anti-gambling initiatives had been replicated in Alabama, I thought: Hmmmm. Texas and Alabama. Alabama and Texas. Don’t we know somebody famous who made these two states his personal political stomping grounds in the 1990s? Some guy named Rove?Rove’s dominance of Texas politics in the 1990s is a well-known story. But as Josh Green explained in his Atlantic profile of Rove last year, Alabama was nearly as large a preoccupation for the Boy Genius. As part of his patented effort to bond the business community and cultural conservatives (and their money) to the GOP through abrasive judicial campaigns, Rove was deeply involved in an effort to take over the Alabama Supreme Court from 1994 to 1998 (indeed, his one loss was to a judicial candidate named Roy Moore, a defeat which, according to Green, deepened Rove’s respect for the political power of the Christian Right).Now, none of this proves in the least that Rove had any involvement in the Casino Shakedown, even though it sure seems Rovian in its three-cushion-shot dynamics of raising special-interest money to succor conservative constituency groups and damage Democrats. But the idea that anything as big as this scam, involving several Rove/Bush intimates and three very visible statewide public campaigns, went down in those two particular states without ol’ Karl having a clue about it is as incredible as the idea that Ralph Reed got millions of casino dollars without suspecting the source of the money. Somewhere, the bloodhounds are gathering and getting the scent of dirty dollars. It will be interesting to follow their trail.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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April 18: Democrats Can Talk Tariffs and Foreign Dungeons At the Same Time
There’s a mini-debate among Democrats at the moment over the propriety of fighting against the deportation and imprisonment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia when other issues beckon, and I made my own thoughts known at New York:
As the story of the abduction, deportation, and detention of Kilmar Abrego Garcia plays out in El Salvador and U.S. federal courts, the politics of the situation are roiling many waters. For the most part, Republicans are following President Trump’s lead in wallowing in the misery of Abrego Garcia and other deportees; exploiting unrelated “angel moms” and other symbols of random undocumented-immigrant crimes; and blasting Democrats for their misplaced sympathy for the “wrong people.” Even as Team Trump risks a constitutional crisis by evading judicial orders to grant due process to the people ICE is snatching off the streets, it seems confident that public backing for the administration’s mass-deportation program and “border security” initiatives generally will make this a winning issue for the GOP.
For their part, Democrats aren’t as united politically on the salience of this dispute, even though virtually all of them object in principle to Trump’s lawless conduct. Most notably, California governor and likely 2028 presidential contender Gavin Newsom warned against dwelling on it, as The Bulwark reported:
“Asked to comment on the ongoing standoff between Trump, El Salvador, and the U.S. judicial system, Newsom scoffed. ‘You know, this is the distraction of the day,’ he said. ‘This is the debate they want. This is their 80-20 issue, as they’ve described it …’
“’Those that believe in the rule of law are defending it. But it’s a tough case, because people are really — are they defending MS-13? Are they defending, you know, someone who’s out of sight, out of mind in El Salvador? … It’s exactly the debate [Republicans] want, because they don’t want this debate on the tariffs. They don’t want to be accountable to markets today … They want to have this conversation. Don’t get distracted by distractions. We’re all perfect sheep.’”
Newsom is reflecting an ancient Democratic “populist” prejudice against non-economic messaging, which was revived by the 2024 presidential election, in which warnings about the threat to democracy and to the rule of law posed by Trump were widely adjudged to have failed to sway an electorate focused obsessively on the economy and the cost of living. And it’s true that the Abrego Garcia case arose precisely as Trump made himself highly vulnerable on the economy with his wild tariff schemes.
But the emotions aroused by the administration’s cruelty and arrogance in launching its mass-deportation initiative have struck chords with major elements of the Democratic base, particularly among those attuned to the constitutional issues involved. And it’s not a secret that even though Trump enjoys generally positive approval ratings on his handling of immigration issues, they begin to erode when specifics are polled. It’s also quite likely that whatever the overall numbers show, deportation overreach will hurt Trump and his party precisely in the immigrant-adjacent elements of the electorate in which he made crucial 2024 gains.
Personally, I’ve never been a fan of communications strategies that turn message discipline into message bondage, persuading political gabbers and writers to grind away on a single note and ignore other opportunities and challenges. In the current situation facing Democrats, strategic silence on a volatile issue like immigration (which was arguably one of Kamala Harris’s problems during the 2024 campaign) enables the opposition to fill in the blanks with invidious characterizations. In politics, silence is almost never golden.
Perhaps more to the point, as G. Elliot Morris argues, there are ways to link messages on different issues that reinforce them all:
“One way to focus messaging on both the economy and immigration, for example, might be to show how unchecked executive power is dangerous. After all the most unpopular parts of Trump’s agenda — tariffs and deportations for undocumented migrants who have been here a long time and committed no crimes — are a direct result of executive overreach.
“The power that gives Trump the ability to levy extreme tariffs was given to the president when Congress expected him to be forgiving of tariffs on an individual basis as an act of diplomacy, not to plunge the world economic order into crisis. Similarly, the judiciary has said Trump’s deporting of Abrego Garcia, as well as hundreds of Venezuelans, runs afoul of multiple Court orders.”
Even if you conclude that “unchecked executive power” is too abstract a line of attack for today’s paycheck-focused swing voters, it shouldn’t be that difficult to hit two messages simultaneously, particularly since the message on Trump’s tariffs doesn’t require a whole lot of reiteration from Democrats: Voters can see it in the stock market, and soon enough they will likely see it in the prices they are paying for goods and services.
But the real clincher in persuading Democrats to take the Abrego Garcia case very seriously is this: Anything less than full-throated opposition to the administration’s joyful embrace of Gestapo tactics and un-American policies in deportation cases will undoubtedly dishearten constituents who already fear their elected officials are unprincipled cynics who won’t lift a finger to fight Trump without first convening a focus group of tuned-out swing voters. Politicians don’t have to emulate Senator Chris Van Hollen’s decision to fly down to El Salvador and meet with his imprisoned constituent to recognize that his willingness to do so was impressive and authentic. As he told my colleague Benjamin Hart in an interview earlier this week, “The issue here is protecting the rights of individuals under our Constitution … I do believe this is a place that we need to stand up and fight.” It’s hard to do anything else without shame.