Abramoff UpdateDonald Luskin
talked to Dwight Morris, who prepared the numbers used by the American Prospect in the article
debunked here and in
Donald's article for the National Review. Morris agrees that the American Prospect's extrapolation from his research was faulty:
Morris agreed with us and with Pat Curley at Brainster's Blog that this analysis was spurious, considering that the period before the tribes retained Abramoff was much longer than the period over which they retained him. "To say it dropped nine percent is silly," Morris told me, "because you can't compare those two timeframes. We did not prepare that number for them. In fact, it was not even in the reporter's original draft."
According to Morris, the real story in the numbers he produced is not that Abramoff's clients didn't give to Democrats, or gave less, once they retainined Abramoff. They did give. It's just that they gave more to Republicans. That doesn't surprise Morris -- "Abramoff's a Republican," he said. As to the thrust of the Prospect story -- that, according to the story's title "Dems Don't Know Jack" -- Morris says "The headline was atrocious."Let me mention here that I exchanged a few emails with Morris yesterday. It was certainly my impression that he is an honest and straightforward fellow, and if you are looking for a company that does
research on campaign contributions, I'd recommend his firm without hesitation.
