“So [we] decided: Why don’t we just say what we are?...In the future, when we get people on the ballot, when people see the swastika on the ballot, they’ll know what they’re getting"

Washington's first and so far only American Nazi Party lobbyist 'splains his "brilliant" stratagem for locking up votes. (Scared yet?)

Update: Hey, Mr. Nazi. Fuggedabout the swastikies on the ballot. If you want to make headway as a lobbyist in Obama's Washington, all you have to do is pony up the do-re-mi:

Although Mr. Obama has made a point of not accepting contributions from registered lobbyists, a review of campaign donations and White House visitor logs shows that special interests have had little trouble making themselves heard. Many of the president’s biggest donors, while not lobbyists, took lobbyists with them to the White House, while others performed essentially the same function on their visits.

More broadly, the review showed that those who donated the most to Mr. Obama and the Democratic Party since he started running for president were far more likely to visit the White House than others. Among donors who gave $30,000 or less, about 20 percent visited the White House, according to a New York Times analysis that matched names in the visitor logs with donor records. But among those who donated $100,000 or more, the figure rises to about 75 percent. Approximately two-thirds of the president’s top fund-raisers in the 2008 campaign visited the White House at least once, some of them numerous times.

The reasons someone might have gained access to the White House and made a donation are wide-ranging, and it is clear that in some cases the administration came down against the policies being sought by the visitors. But the regular appearance of big donors inside the White House underscores how political contributions continue to lubricate many of the interactions between officials and their guests, if for no other reason than that donors view the money as useful for getting a foot in the door.