The guilty plea and sentencing of lobbyist Jack Abramoff elevated his story into one of full-fledged scandal. Abramoff was once a high-flying Republican lobbyist with many connections on Capitol Hill. He wined and dined the Washington power elite. And he actually bilked poor people -- the Native American tribes who have recently prospered from casino gambling and who hired Abramoff as their lobbyist.
Many who knew or dealt with Abramoff have dismissed him as a bad apple. But in a new book, The K Street Gang, journalist Matthew Continetti suggests that the corruption symbolized by Abramoff was systematic. Continetti's book traces the roots of the scandal to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. In the author's telling, the scandal is the result of a GOP reform movement that got hijacked by greed.
Continetti, a writer for The Weekly Standard, speaks with All Things Considered host Robert Siegel.
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