Brass Ones

by digby

You’ve got to hand it to the Republicans. Karl Rove must have heard that he was off the hook — and the first thing he did was head up to New Hampshire to raise money for the most crooked state GOP operation in the nation:

MANCHESTER, N.H. –Presidential adviser Karl Rove is the keynote speaker Monday night at the state Republican Party’s annual dinner — which Democrats say is to raise money to help the party pay legal fees in a phone jamming case.

State Party Chairman Wayne Semprini acknowledged Friday he would like to raise enough money so the suit “represents a very small portion of our budget.”

But he said the case has nothing to do with Rove’s appearance.

“He won’t say boo about phone jamming,” Semprini said. “There’s absolutely no connection between his being here and phone jamming. Period. This is our annual dinner.”

Democrats are suing Republicans to find out who knew about the phone jamming done Election Day 2002 that tied up a Democratic and nonpartisan effort to get out the vote and provide rides to the polls. Three Republican operatives have been convicted in the plot.

Democrats and New Hampshire Citizen Action plan demonstrations to coincide with Rove’s speech to draw attention to the event and the phone jamming case.

Semprini blamed the case on a “rogue employee who did a real dumb thing.”

“As a party, we’re paying a price,” he said, but added that the state party won’t go out of business as a result.

Not that anyone has any regrets. Here’s the rogue employee whom I quoted last week:

In his first interview about the case, Raymond said he doesn’t know anything that would suggest the White House was involved in the plan to tie up Democrats’ phone lines and thereby block their get-out-the-vote effort. But he said the scheme reflects a broader culture in the Republican Party that is focused on dividing voters to win primaries and general elections. He said examples range from some recent efforts to use border-security concerns to foster anger toward immigrants to his own role arranging phone calls designed to polarize primary voters over abortion in a 2002 New Jersey Senate race.

“A lot of people look at politics and see it as the guy who wins is the guy who unifies the most people,” he said. “I would disagree. I would say the candidate who wins is the candidate who polarizes the right bloc of voters. You always want to polarize somebody.”

Karl couldn’t have said it better himself. And I’m sure that Karl will make sure that Mr Raymond is taken care of. He did his time so more important Republicans didn’t have to. That’s how it works.

Feelin’ good about that Scooter?

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