Abramoff - The Breaking of the Line

I haven't been following every in and out of Abramoff because I figured at some point, since Scanlon and Kidan plead out, that Abramoff would reach a deal and we would get all the lurid details straight from the horse's ass.

And I'm certainly not gonna out-analyze the legal people in the blogosphere, so until the announcement later today, I just thought I'd share this personal mental picture of what's gonna happen going forward.

First, I would expect a revival of the old Republican favorite, "the dems did it, too" starting as a coordinated talking point up into tonight's news shows.

Now, perhaps I'm optimistic, but I think that Matthews, Lehrer, and the rest of them will helpfully point out that that's not altogether true, leading to more and more strident repetitions throughout the evening, and for those outside the inner circle, into tomorrow.

At some point in this process, I would expect the Repubs to start repeating poorly fitting historical parallels to try to justify 10% of their contingent being on Abramoff's list, and the "long time" (read: insider) reporters will start talking about Abscam.

Starting tomorrow, the core Repub talking heads will probably be coming out with a second wave of spin, maybe even as early as tomorrow morning. It will be one of two possibilities, either an effort to admit some collective guilt and then minimize the overall importance of 20 elected officials being alleged to have taken bribes, calling it "business as usual" or somesuch, or that the whole thing is somehow a partisan attack.

Although these could both give us some great quotes, I don't see either of these holding up against questioning very long.

And then will come my favorite part, I would guess sometime later in the week, certainly by the Sunday shows, the breaking of the line.

At this point, those Republicans that are clean, or want to be perceived as clean, will begin to try to put distance between Abramoff, the dirty congressmen, and themselves. They will begin to condemn the whole thing, and the names of Ney, Delay and the lot will begin to be spoken in a different tone.

And the beauty of this whole thing is that the people who are now the targets of this investigation all became successful through their ability to speak and spin, and so as the pressure mounts, they will react as if this is a political problem, not a legal problem.

There's a big difference. They will be making foolish statements, leaking half true stories, and attempting to shape the story to point the blame anywhere but at themselves. This will probably further complicate their cases and make some great TV.

Do you think for a minute that Delay wouldn't throw anybody else in the grease if it got him out of trouble?

I don't normally recommend it, but watching a few of the news talkshows this week might be worthwhile. A good guage of how the spin is going is to watch how many times the repub talking head repeats the key talking point of the day. I'm betting that "Let's not forget, democrats are in this, too," will be tonight's big winner. The more it is repeated and the less that is said beyond it, the more trouble republicans are really in.

And, by the way, anybody seen any bits on the Plame case lately? Luskin's not leaking and Fitzgerald has been out of sight since Christmas.

UPDATE: Thinkprogress has a great index on alot of the players involved in Abramoff.