(By Jack Abramoff):  As I built what became the nation’s largest individual lobbying practice — with 40 employees at its peak — I remained the only lobbyist in the firm who had not previously worked on Capitol Hill. Former Congress members and staff are everywhere on K Street, the lair of the lobbying world. Why? Because they have access.

That access was crucial to our lobbying efforts. If we couldn’t get in the door, we couldn’t present our client’s case to decision makers. Hill veterans also had expertise. They knew the Byzantine legislative process and how to make it work for clients. Access and expertise: That’s how the great lobbying machines work.

But that’s not all.

I had many arrows in my lobbyist quiver to endear our firm to Congress: two fancy Washington restaurants that became virtual cafeterias for congressional staff, the best seats to every sporting event and concert in town, private planes at the ready to whisk members and staff to exotic locations, millions of dollars in campaign contributions ready for distribution. We had it all. But even with these corrupting gifts, nothing beat the revolving door.

During my time lobbying, I found that the vast majority of congressional staff I encountered wanted to get a job on K Street. And why not? Their jobs on the Hill were only as secure as their boss’s re-election prospects. Even then, they were never certain when they would encounter an office purge. The other side of the rainbow — K Street — was heavenly. Salaries were much higher. Perks were abundant. And lobbying is a growth industry, no matter which party is in office. As young staff members got married and had children, making the jump to K Street was often on their minds.

As I cultivated relationships on the Hill, or as the firm’s lobbyists transformed their congressional friends into champions for our clients, I noticed the staff members craved a job on K Street far more than a fancy meal or a Washington Redskins ticket.

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Read more at Bloomberg.com HERE.

(By Wynton Hall):  With Energy Secretary Steven Chu set to testify Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee about the government’s $573 million loan to failed solar panel maker Solyndra, an explosive new list of energy loan amounts to President Obama’s top fundraisers, bundlers, and supporters has been released by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer, author of Throw Them All Out.

As the list reveals, 80 percent of all $20.5 billion in Department of Energy loans went to President Obama’s top donors. Furthermore, some of those dwarf in size those given to Obama bundler George Kaiser, owner of the now defunct Solyndra.

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Read more at BigGovernment.com HERE.

(By Thomas Sowell):  Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that a good catch phrase could stop thinking for 50 years. One of the often-repeated catch phrases of our time — “It’s the economy, stupid!” — has already stopped thinking in some quarters for a couple of decades.

There is no question that the state of the economy can affect elections. But there is also no iron law that all elections will be decided by the state of the economy.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected for an unprecedented third term after two terms in which unemployment was in double digits for eight consecutive years.

We may lament the number of people who are unemployed or who are on food stamps today. But those who give the Obama administration credit for coming to their rescue when they didn’t have a job are likely to greatly outnumber those who blame the administration for their not having a job in the first place.

An expansion of the welfare state in hard times seems to have been the secret of FDR’s great political success in the midst of economic disaster. An economic study published in a scholarly journal in 2004 concluded that the Roosevelt administration’s policies prolonged the Great Depression by several years. But few people read economic studies.

This economy has been sputtering along through most of the Obama administration, with the unemployment rate hovering around 9 percent. But none of that means that Barack Obama is going to lose the 2012 election.

Even polls which show “any Republican” with more public support than Obama does not mean that Obama will lose.

The president is not going to run against “any Republican.” He is going to run against some specific Republican, and that Republican can expect to be attacked, denounced and denigrated for months on end before the November 2012 elections — not only by the Democrats, but also by the media that is heavily pro-Democrat.

We have already seen how unsubstantiated allegations from women with questionable histories have dropped Herman Cain from front runner to third place in just a couple of weeks.

In short, it takes a candidate to beat a candidate, and everything depends on what kind of candidate that is.

The smart money inside the Beltway says that the Republicans need to pick a moderate candidate who can appeal to independent voters, not just to the conservative voters who turn out to vote in Republican primaries. Those who think this way say that you have to “reach out” to Hispanics, the elderly and other constituencies.

What is remarkable is how seldom the smart money folks look at what has actually been happening in presidential elections.

Ronald Reagan won two landslide elections when he ran as Ronald Reagan. Vice President George H.W. Bush then won when he ran as if he were another Ronald Reagan, with his famous statement, “Read my lips, no new taxes.”

But after Bush 41 was elected and turned “kinder and gentler” — to everyone except the taxpayers — he lost to an unknown governor from a small state.

Other Republican presidential candidates who went the “moderate” route — Bob Dole and John McCain — also came across as neither fish nor fowl, and also went down to defeat.

Now the smart money inside the Beltway is saying that Mitt Romney, who is nothing if not versatile in his positions, is the Republicans’ best hope for replacing Obama.

If conservative Republicans split their votes among a number of conservative candidates in the primaries, that can mean ending up with a presidential candidate in the Bob Dole-John McCain mold — and risking a Bob Dole-John McCain result in the next election.

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Read more at RealClearPolitics.com HERE.

By Michael Levenson & Matt Viser – Tea Party activists have time, energy, and a ready-made volunteer army to devote to the presidential campaign. Now, if they could only find a candidate.

Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and, more recently, Herman Cain have captured the hearts of Tea Party activists and religious conservatives, but none has so far been able to consolidate and sustain that backing. Their see-sawing support has some in the movement beginning to worry that Mitt Romney – the favorite of many in the GOP establishment, but a candidate the Tea Party has kept at arm’s length – will capture the nomination.

“That absolutely creates, for leadership in the Tea Party movement, strategic problems,’’ said Joe Miller, a former US Senate candidate from Alaska who now leads a group, Western Representation PAC, whose stated goal is defeating Romney. “We’re not seeing anything other than a fracturing right now of the vote.’’

This was supposed to be the Tea Party’s year to rock the Republican primary. After helping Republicans capture the majority in the US House in the 2010 mid-term elections,Tea Party activists were expected to play a pivotal role in helping to select the party’s presidential nominee.

And they have plenty of candidates to choose from: Bachmann started the congressional Tea Party Caucus. Cain has been speaking at Tea Party rallies since 2009. Ron Paul has been called the “grandfather of the Tea Party.’’ And Perry wrote “Fed Up!’’ an anti-Washington, Tea Party manifesto.

Yet Romney, a candidate many in the movement view as too timid and too moderate, has consistently stayed near the front of the pack, buoyed by a well-funded campaign, major endorsements, smooth debate performances, and a sense of inevitability surrounding his second run for the nomination.

Tea Party activists and religious conservatives, however, contend a crucial factor plays in their favor: Romney cannot seem to tally more than 20-25 percent support in national polls, meaning almost 80 percent of the vote is still in play. As the field inevitably narrows, they say, their potent forces will unite behind one alternative to the former Massachusetts governor.

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Read more at Boston.com HERE.