Salon.com News | Abramoff-Scan­lon School of Sleaze:

Scan­lon, a for­mer aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R‑Texas, … con­fessed the source code of recent Repub­li­can elec­toral vic­to­ries: tar­get reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives, dis­tract every­one else, and then rail­road through com­plex initiatives.

“The wack­os get their infor­ma­tion through the Chris­t­ian right, Chris­t­ian radio, mail, the inter­net and tele­phone trees,” Scan­lon wrote in the memo, which was read into the pub­lic record at a hear­ing of the Sen­ate Indi­an Affairs Com­mit­tee. “Sim­ply put, we want to bring out the wack­os to vote against some­thing and make sure the rest of the pub­lic lets the whole thing slip past them.”

Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay treat­ed reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives as wack­os, and manip­u­lat­ed them into vot­ing for gam­bling when they actu­al­ly opposed it.

Peo­ple vot­ing against their inter­est because they’re all worked up about ancil­lary issues. Sounds vague­ly like some­thing some­one once wrote about Kansas.