Just days after issuing a stern lecture to GOP members of Congress on ethics, Mitt Romney, the Chairman of the Republican Governors Association, was forced to return $500,000 of Abramoff tainted money that the group accepted in 2002 according to a story by the AP.

Fired Up! called for the RGA to return this money on  Thursday, January 5th.

Yesterday, Republicans, including the President, engaged in a publicity stunt.  In an attempt to distance themselves from the Abramoff scandal, they returned a handful of personal contributions they had received from Jack Abramoff. 

Yet, not a single Republican leader has has the integrity to demand that Republican Governors around the country and the RGA return this tainted money.

This is Exhibit A in the argument that Abramoff is a core part of the modern GOP.  He and the elected officials he has bribed and cultivated have institutionalized corruption within the GOP in a fashion that we can hardly yet comprehend.

As a starting point, every Republican Governor who has ever taken money from the RGA should be publicly hounded until they return every cent of this sleazy money.

And on January 9th, the day Governor Romney gave his lecture on ethics to Congress, Fired Up! called him out specifically.

Thus far no Governors have indicated an intention to return the tainted funds from the Scanlon/Abramoff controlled company.  Neither Governor Romney, nor the RGA has commented on the matter.  The AP reporter who wrote the story on Romney's comments did not ask him to react to this information.

So tell me again exactly what moral ground Romney has to stand on to make this call to clean up Congress?  Shouldn't he begin by cleaning up the RGA?

But last night, according to an AP report:

Gov. Mitt Romney, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, said Wednesday the association will give the money to American Red Cross chapters in five hurricane-ravaged states.
   
"When influence peddling is alleged, a political institution like the Republican Governors Association wants to be above any possible shadow of complicity," the governor said Wednesday in an interview with The Associated Press.

The move allows Romney and the association to avoid questions about the contributions while they are trying to help Republican governors win elections in 36 states this fall.

But it certainly seems that Governor Romney was a little overeager to exonerate the RGA in this matter, and the AP gave him a little too much help doing so.  

• Returning the contribution does not set the RGA above any "shadow of complicity."   Returning the money does not in any way address the state of their knowledge in 2002, and will probably only generate additional interest from the feds.
  
• And exactly how does this allow them to avoid questions?  It seems to me that it should cause a great deal more scrutiny of the RGA and its practices.  What did they know, and when did they know it?  If they were a party to this sort of scheme once, they very well might have been at other times.
• The story also fails to mention that the RGA did not report this contribution at all for nearly 18 months after it was legally required to do so.
  

It is not clear from the AP version in the Washington Post when the tainted Abramoff money will be returned.  (see related post)

This $500,000 reinforces the notion expressed by Editor Rich Lowry in his column in the National Review this week that this is a Republican scandal.

It is remarkable that one of the institutions of the Republican national party would find themselves in a situation where they took $500,000 that came from proceeds of an Abramoff scheme.  The GOP is corrupted at its core.