One of the amazing things about talk radio is how often hosts choose to blindly stay on message and sacrifice opportunities to make real news. The July 20th edition of The John Carlson Show was a perfect example, where the guest was none other than Grover Norquist - a long-time right wing activist who famously foreshadowed the Hurricane Katrina debacle by saying he'd like to shrink government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." More recently he's been uncovered as a key cog in Jack Abramoff's money-driven political machine. But instead of even the most cursory inquiry into Norquist's role in that scandal, Carlson insisted on kissing ass and sticking to the usual script about high taxes. Listeners were also denied the chance to get to the meat of the matter because there were no phone calls taken during that segment of the show.

The association between Norquist and Abramoff goes way back. The two first worked together in the early 1980's when Norquist managed Abramoff's successful election as Chairman of the College Republican National Committee. Abramoff then hired Norquist to be executive director of the organization. (As an interesting aside, John Carlson was President of the University of Washington branch of the Young Republicans during the 1980 Reagan campaign, the exact time that Abramoff was getting his start organizing college campuses for Reagan.)

As reported in the Washington Post, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee has been uncovering a huge amount of coordination between Abramoff and Norquist. Most notable is they way Norquist's group Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) was used as a money laundering conduit to help Abramoff's lottery and Indian casino clients. To make a long story short, Abramoff's clients were facing new competition for consumer's gambling dollars. Abramoff offered to help their situation by getting right-wing Christian organizations run by Ralph Reed to oppose the new gambling competitors. Now it would obviously be problematic if the do-gooders were directly funded by another gambling operation, so Abramoff arranged for Norquist's ATR to service as a convenient conduit. Abramoff's pro-gambling clients would donate to ATR, Norquist would take a bit off the top as a handling fee, and then the funds would be passed on to Ralph Reed. Reed would then be able to fund his very cynical operation to involve pastors and right-wing media in the campaign to oppose expansion of some gambling to the benefit of existing gaming businesses. Thanks to Norquist there would be no visible tie between the two parties.

There's additional evidence that Norquist has often operated as a hired gun and would only campaign against taxes if certain parties made large contributions to the organizations he controlled. The U.S. Senate investigation has uncovered a treasure trove of emails that document this behavior. In 1995 Abramoff had a corporate client who was trying to get rid of a tax that impacted their business. Norquist's American's for Tax Reform would be a perfect "grass-roots" group to help in a situation like that, so Abramoff brokered a deal where Norquist would help out in exchange for a secret $50,000 donation to ATR. Discretion was a key part of the deal: "We do not want the opponents to think that we are trying to buy the taxpayer movement."

At one point Carlson did obliquely dance around the Abramoff issue in his interview with Norquist, when during a discussion of Republican chances in the upcoming November elections Carlson said

We shouldn't have to worry about Montana, that's Reagan country, but the Senator has some personal issues there.

That Senator in Montana is none other than Conrad Burns, who has taken a big hit from his dealings with Abramoff. Those dealings included receiving about $150,000 from Abramoff clients that weren't even in his state and helping direct government appropriations at Abramoff's request. In fact, Abramoff recently told Vanity Fair that "Every appropriation we wanted from Senator Conrad Burns' committee we got." I imagine that Norquist could have some unique information on Burn's troubles, but that was all left unsaid.

An additional area that could have generated an interesting discussion would have been Carlson's support of John McCain in the 2008 presidential race. McCain and Norquist are bitter adversaries, with McCain heading up the Senate Abramoff investigations that have aired so much of Norquist's dirty laundry. In fact, Norquist recently accused McCain of lying and of being "dishonest". But in yet another instance, Carlson refused to use the opportunity to draw a contrast with between himself and his otherwise like-minded guest.

Is the conservative movement really so weak that it can't afford a few tough questions to the "leading grass-roots conservative in the United States" ? Is their agenda so threadbare they are only left with the same old, invented propaganda pieces on taxes? One wonders if the recent drop in talk radio listeners is due to the fact that hosts are too hemmed in by unfriendly facts to allow an interesting, honest discussion on the issues. Maybe fantasy-land softball questions just aren't holding listeners attention like they used to.