The main source of his power, however, is his prolific fundraising, and here’s where Politico buries the lead. The article calls him “uniquely adept” at soliciting big contributions, and notes that his “clout is also derived from his serious interest in running for president in 2012, a point he is making clear in private conversations.” But the principle cause for the RGA’s success is structural in nature, not personally related to Barbour at all:

Barbour has a huge advantage over Republicans in Washington when it comes to raising money. The RGA is a 527 organization, which unlike the RNC or the federal PACs, can raise money in unlimited sums from individuals and corporations, the latter of which have been barred since 2002 from giving to party committees. That’s enabled drug makers and energy companies, for example, to give millions to Barbour’s RGA.

If your group is allowed to raise millions from individual donors and corporations, while the national parties and their Senate and House committees must stick to strictly capped donations from individuals and PACs, it’s easy to see how you might come to be regarded as “uniquely adept” at fundraising — but hardly fair. To be sure, Barbour’s reputation for fundraising also tracks back to his successful chairmanship of the RNC in the 1990s, but that was before “soft money” donations to the national parties were banned in 2002.

Heck, I’m mortified when it comes to asking people for money but I imagine that even I could outperform the RNC with the comparative advantages the RGA currently enjoys. Nonetheless, Barbour’s success at the RGA is earning him front page profiles and bolstering his chances at making a credible run for the Republican nomination in 2012.

The American League of Lobbyists has teamed with the Sunlight Foundation in hopes of changing the law to require more of Washington’s influence class to register.

“I don’t care if you call it a rainmaker or a strategic adviser, if you’re talking to a lawmaker about any issue or anything you’re lobbying,” said Dave Wenhold, president of the league, which represents 1,100 lobbyists.

The current law requires people to register if they spend enough time and money on lobbying. A lobbyist, according to the lobbying disclosure act, makes more than one lobbying contact, spends more than 20 percent of their time on lobbying activities and has more than $11,500 in lobbying expenses over the course of the year.

The fallout from the Jack Abramoff scandal continues…

Lobbyist Todd Boulanger was charged Wednesday with conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with tickets and meals he lavished upon public officials at the behest of his then-boss, the disgraced über-lobbyist,  Jack Abramoff.

He is expected to plead guilty to honest services fraud, according to court documents obtained by ABC News.

You may recognize Todd Boulanger from his regular appearances as a political commentator during the 2008 elections under the billing “Republican strategist.”

The Washington Post notes that, for a time, it appeared that Boulanger had been successfully rehabilitated, at least by Washington standards. Politico last year heaped praise on Boulanger, the former vice president of the Washington lobbying firm, Cassidy & Associates, as a “politico to watch” who “has proven his nattily attired, outside-the-box staying power.”

Well, Boulanger’s is probably hoping that his guilty plea is enough to keep him outside of the federal minimum security box.

Incoming Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is expected to announce some new rules tomorrow governing the behavior of lobbyists for financial institutions seeking bailout money under the $700 billion financial rescue plan, according to the The Associated Press:

The new rules are designed to crack down on lobbyist influence over the rescue program, according to an administration official with knowledge of the changes.

This official, who spoke to The Associated Press on grounds of anonymity because the new rules had not yet been announced, said that they went farther than restrictions the Bush administration imposed.

The new rules will restrict the contact officials can have with lobbyists in connection with applications for funds from the bailout program, the official said. This official said the rules, which are aimed at making sure political influence is not a factor in awarding rescue money, will take as a model the limits that are imposed on political lobbying of the Treasury Department on tax matters.

However, Geithner’s new rules might seem more impressive if the incoming treasury secretary showed more concern about lobbyists on his own staff.

As my colleague Mary Kane reported today, Geithner’s own chief of staff, Mark Patterson, is a former lobbyist. Public lobbying disclosure records available from the Senate Office of Public Records show that Patterson lobbied for the Goldman Sachs Group as recently as April of 2008. At that time, Patterson was registered to lobby on credit default swaps, foreclosures, credit rating agencies, sovereign wealth funds, and a host of other financial issues that are directly related to the collapse of the financial sector and the Treasury’s attempts to clean up the mess.

Goldman Sachs is already a major recipient of TARP funds.

The fact that Patterson is eligible to work for Geithner appears to illustrate some gaping loopholes in Obama’s supposedly tough executive order on ethics for executive branch employees. Under Obama’s new rules, lobbyists are forbidden from seeking employment at any agency they lobbied.

The last two years of SOPR records show that Patterson lobbied Congress on legislation that affected the Treasury Department, but not the Treasury Department itself. If Patterson had lobbied the Treasury Department directly, he would appear to be ineligible to serve under Obama’s executive order, which bars former lobbyists from “seek[ing] or accept[ing] employment with any executive agency that [they] lobbied within the 2 years before the date of [their] appointment.”

The same executive order also forbids lobbyists from having any contact with their former clients or making any decisions regarding their old lobbying issues during their first two years on the job. Is the Bailout Czar’s chief of staff going to be making decisions about his old lobbying issues? I guess it depends on what the meaning of “is” is.

Today the New York Times launched its latest attack on this campaign in its capacity as an Obama advocacy organization. Let us be clear about what this story alleges: The New York Times charges that McCain-Palin 2008 campaign manager Rick Davis was paid by Freddie Mac until last month, contrary to previous reporting, as well as statements by this campaign and by Mr. Davis himself.

In fact, the allegation is demonstrably false. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006. As has been previously reported, Mr. Davis has seen no income from Davis Manafort since 2006. Zero. Mr. Davis has received no salary or compensation since 2006. Mr. Davis has received no profit or partner distributions from that firm on any basis — weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual — since 2006. Again, zero. Neither has Mr. Davis received any equity in the firm based on profits derived since his financial separation from Davis Manafort in 2006.

Further, and missing from the Times’ reporting, Mr. Davis has never — never — been a lobbyist for either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Mr. Davis has not served as a registered lobbyist since 2005.

However, the Times’ story did not say “Rick Davis was paid by Freddie Mac until last month,” as the campaign asserts. Rather, it clearly states that Davis’ firm was paid by Freddie Mac until last month. Neither does the article make any of the other straw-man arguments that the campaign takes issue with.

The article does seem to raise questions about Davis’ use of his connection to Sen. John McCain. His firm’s clients seem to think it’s a very good idea to maintain ties to Davis, in the event that McCain becomes president. It also makes clear the McCain campaign’s hypocrisy in attacking Sen. Barack Obama for his ties to Jim Johnson, a former Fannie Mae CEO — when the McCain campaign’s ties to Freddie Mac are more recent and direct. Not surprisingly, the McCain campaign’s statement does not address these issues. Instead, it would rather attack the messenger, again.

In addition to yesterday’s maligned report from The New York Times that McCain campaign manager Rick Davis earned $2 million as the president of an organization that lobbied on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to resist increased federal regulation, Bloomberg reports today that the reported head of McCain’s transition team lobbied on behalf of Freddie Mac as well.

The lobbying firm of the man Republicans say John McCain has chosen to begin planning a presidential transition earned more than a quarter of a million dollars this year representing Freddie Mac, one of the companies McCain blames for the nation’s financial crisis.

Timmons & Co., whose founder and chairman emeritus is William Timmons Sr., was registered to lobby for Freddie Mac from 2000 through this month, when the federal government took over both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Newly available congressional records show Timmons’s firm received $260,000 this year before its lobbying activities were barred under terms of the government rescue of the failed mortgage giant. Timmons, 77, is listed as a lobbyist for Freddie Mac on the company’s midyear financial-disclosure form.

Time’s Michael Scherer reported earlier this month that Timmons would helm McCain’s team charged with preparing for a transition to the White House in the event of a victory in November. According to Bloomberg, the McCain campaign would not confirm that Timmons was working for the GOP presidential nominee. McCain has repeatedly blasted the mortgage companies’ lobbyists for their role in creating the current crisis. From Bloomberg:

“At the center of the problem were the lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the administration to ignore the festering problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” he said last week in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

“Using money and influence, they prevented reforms that would have curbed their power and limited their ability to damage our economy,” he said. “And now, as ever, the American taxpayers are left to pay the price for Washington’s failure.”

Perhaps the McCain campaign should hire an adviser — preferably not a lobbyist — just to keep all of the other advisers’ past lobbying activities straight, so as to avoid embarrassing news reports such as this.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (Lauren Victoria Burke, wdcpix.com)

The ties that bind Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the GOP vice-presidential nominee, to her state’s infamous “Bridges to Nowhere” just keep getting tighter.

Steven W. Silver, a Washington lobbyist who began representing the small town of Wasilla during Palin’s tenure as mayor, is also lobbying for construction of a controversial bridge linking Anchorage to the borough housing Wasilla, according to lobbying disclosure records.

That proposed span — dubbed “Don Young’s Way” after Alaska’s lone House member — gained notoriety in 2005, when Young and Sen. Ted Stevens (R) fought to earmark hundreds of millions of federal dollars for it and another controversial bridge connecting Ketchikan, Alaska (pop. 7,300), to an island airport. Both became symbols of wasteful federal spending, and were widely ridiculed as “Bridges to Nowhere.”

Palin, the recent surprise pick as Sen. John McCain’s running mate, has forged the image of a reformer dedicated to reining in federal spending. While she originally supported the federal money for the bridges, she has been touting her more-recent opposition to the Ketchikan earmark as evidence that she’s a business-as-unusual politician — a message that’s evolved into a prominent campaign issue this year.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

On Wednesday, Palin told the GOP faithful gathered in Minneapolis for the Republican National Convention, “I told the Congress ‘thanks but no thanks’ for that ‘Bridge to Nowhere.’ If our state wanted a bridge, we’d build it ourselves.”

She was talking about the Ketchikan span.

But she hasn’t come out against “Don Young’s Way.” In fact, the Palin administration has plans to hire an outside contractor to estimate what the project would cost, according to a June report from The Anchorage Daily News. The contractor alone is expected to run the state $200,000, the report said. The bridge itself has been tagged at between $450 million and $1.5 billion.

The Daily News reported:

The agency charged with coming up with a bridge plan — the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority — recently estimated the span would cost $667 million if construction begins next year. The authority, which made the estimate in response to a request from the governor’s office, said that figure could increase to $824 million by 2015.

[…]

Randy Ruaro, a special assistant to Gov. Sarah Palin, said the administration, even in the face of the recent lengthy report from the bridge authority, was having trouble getting an accurate picture of everything that is involved in the project, of the timing of the phases, and of the costs. He said the independent estimate is expected to answer those questions.

With Palin remaining receptive to “Don Young’s Way,” Sen Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, has seen an opening. Thursday his office pounced, sending an email blast to reporters proclaiming, “Palin only announced opposition to one ‘Bridge to Nowhere,’ still supports the other one.”

Silver, the former chief of staff to the now-indicted Stevens, began lobbying Congress on behalf of Wasilla in 2000. With Silver’s help, the town secured nearly $27 million in federal earmarks while Palin was mayor, according to an analysis done by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group.

Beginning in the middle of 2004, Silver has also represented the Knik Arm Bridge & Toll Authority, created in 2003 to facilitate the bridge construction. The contract has proved a handsome one. Since that date, Silver’s firm — Robertson, Monagle & Eastbaugh — has taken in roughly $200,000 from the Knik Arm group.

Abramoff wrote to Judge Ellen C. Huvelle yesterday, “I’m not a bad man (although to read all the news articles one would think I was Osama Bin Laden).” Abramoff admitted to deceiving clients and taking advantage of public officials.

The Justice Dept. has, more or less, taken Abramoff’s side. Federal prosecutors say that despite his many misdeeds — including defrauding Native American tribes and sending lawmakers on luxurious vacations so they would ease Northern Marianas Islands labor regulations — Abramoff has assisted other federal investigations. He helped build the case that put former Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) in jail and also revealed details of his dealings with Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), the former House majority leader.

Abramoff was contrite at his sentencing today. “I came before you today as a broken man,” he said, “I’ve fallen into an abyss, your honor, and I don’t quite know how to get out.”

The cruise line-related prison time started in January 2006. So Abramoff might find his way out of prison — if not the abyss — by November 2011.