'Venal' Phil Gramm No Big Loss to McCain Camp

"Nation of whiners” adviser Phil Gramm was simply an "accident waiting to happen" for the McCain campaign, writes Max Blumenthal in Huffington Post. Blumenthal runs down the “reactionary, venal and destructive” senator’s foibles—which run from enabling Enron to investing in porn. Gramm “left a massive heap of wreckage…in his wake,” Blumenthal asserts, helping former campaign co-chair Ken Lay build the shadow banking system that aided the mortgage meltdown.

He also sought to defund the NEA, smeared an opponent for accepting donations from gay rights advocates, and gave an interview to white supremacists. But the icing on the cake is Gramm’s penchant for adult films. He ponied up $7,500 to finance the sequel to Beauty Queens in the 1970s—which bombed and was perhaps fittingly named White House Madness. (More Whinergate stories.)