There's a VERY interesting story in today's Washington Post about Republican Attorney General Candidate Robert F. "Bob" McDonnell. For whatever reason, it's buried on page B4 of the Metro section, even though it's a big deal -- as Waldo Jaquith has previously laid out in great detail. Here's the story, according to the Post:
Two key campaign consultants for Virginia attorney general candidate Robert F. McDonnell established a nonprofit group five years ago that its director now says was used almost exclusively to secretly fund political efforts -- including one organized by indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.McDonnell... provided legal advice and his law firm did work for the nonprofit group, according to its former executive director, Robin Vanderwall. Vanderwall said he does not know whether McDonnell knew of the group's activities but said everything he did was at the direction of McDonnell's current political strategists.
Vanderwall also has ties to McDonnell: He ran the Republican's 1999 campaign for the General Assembly. Vanderwall is now serving a seven-year prison term after he was convicted of soliciting sex from a minor on the Internet. In telephone interviews and correspondence from state prison, Vanderwall said the nonprofit group, Faith and Family Alliance, was used as a pass-through to fund Abramoff's campaign against an Internet gambling ban and to attack U.S. House candidate Eric I. Cantor in his 2000 primary race.
Vanderwall said he was recruited in 2000 to run the Faith and Family Alliance by Tim Phillips and Phil Cox, whose consulting firm has been paid $460,000 this year by McDonnell's campaign for attorney general.
That's right. Bob McDonnell is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to two guys - Phillips and Cox - who are closely tied to the infamous, indicted Republican lobbyist (and friend of Tom DeLay's), Jack Abramoff. He is also paying this money to men who attacked Eric Cantor, one of the Republican Party's top leaders, and a close political ally of Jerry Kilgore's. Hmmm.
McDonnell, of course, claims to know nothing about any of this web of slime, just as he supposedly knew nothing about his former aid Vanderwall's pedophile tendencies, and just as he can't recall if he ever engaged in sodomy. I've got to say, either we've got early onset of Alzheimers here, or Bob McDonnell really is Sgt. Shultz from the late 1960s TV Show "Hogan's Heroes," with his famous line, "I see nuh-THINGK, I hear nuh-THINGK!"
Believe it or not, this story gets even worse. Apparently, the Vanderwall/Phillips/Cox "Faith and Family" group ran an attack campaign against Republican Congressman (and friend of Jerry Kilgore's) Eric Cantor in his 2000 race against state Senator Stephen H. Martin. Among other things, "Faith and Family" sent out attack flyers about Cantor, while simultaneously anti-Semitic phone calls were being made (by someone, never definitively identified) about Cantor, "describing Martin as 'the only Christian' in the race and mentioning that Cantor goes to a synagogue."
"Faith and Family," huh? Sounds more like "Anti-Semitic Bigotry and Corruption." And guess who's now running Bob McDonnell's campaign for Attorney General? Thats' right, Janet Polarek, wife of "Faith and Family" board member Keith Polarek. But again, I'm sure that "Taliban Bob" knows nuh-THINGK! about any of this. Nuh-THINGK at all.
Hey, I've got an idea: let's elect Mr. Know Nuh-THINGK as our next Attorney General. Alternatively, let's say we did but instead vote for the infinitely better candidate in this race, State Senator Creigh Deeds, a truly ethical and good man who will be a great Attorney General. Nah, that makes too much sense...forget I even mentioned it! Heh.