Coming To Jesus
by digby
WASHINGTON — For nearly a decade, Allen Raymond stood at the top ranks of Republican Party power.
He served as chief of staff to a cochairman of the Republican National Committee, supervised Republican contests in mid-Atlantic states for the RNC, and was a top official in publisher Steve Forbes’s presidential campaign. He went on to earn $350,000 a year running a Republican policy group as well as a GOP phone-bank business.
But most recently, Raymond has been in prison. And for that, he blames himself, but also says he was part of a Republican political culture that emphasizes hardball tactics and polarizing voters.
Raymond, 39, has just finished serving a three-month sentence for jamming Democratic phone lines in New Hampshire during the 2002 US Senate race. The incident led to one of the biggest political scandals in the state’s history, the convictions of Raymond and two top Republican officials, and a Democratic lawsuit that seeks to determine whether the White House played any role. The race was won by Senator John E. Sununu , the Republican.
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.”
Raymond stressed that he was making no excuses for his role in the New Hampshire case; he pleaded guilty and told the judge he had done a “bad thing.” But he said he got caught up in an ultra-aggressive atmosphere in which he initially thought the decision to jam the phones “pushed the envelope” but was legal. He also said he had been reluctant to turn down a prominent official of the RNC, fearing that would cost him future opportunities from an organization that was becoming increasingly ruthless.
“Republicans have treated campaigns and politics as a business, and now are treating public policy as a business, looking for the types of returns that you get in business, passing legislation that has huge ramifications for business,” he said. “It is very much being monetized, and the federal government is being monetized under Republican majorities.”
My, oh my. It’s amazing what happens to people when they run into trouble with the law, isn’t it? Talk about your moral clarity.
Now, we all know this has been true for a long time. The modern GOP plays the hardest of hardball. There are no limits. And if they weren’t such arrogant assholes, they could probably always get away with it because law enforcement tends to be conservative. These guys have pushed the limits so far, however, that the law just can’t ignore it any longer.
Hacker and Pierson’s “Off Center” discusses this polarization philosophy in terms of governance, making the case that the Republicans work hard to pass legislation on strict party lines in order to maintain the polarized atmosphere that benefits them so well come election time. And if they lose an election or two they can blame it on the other side — for being obstructionist or partisan. It’s very creative. And they have constructed quite the WATB argument to justify it:
DELAY: In preparing for today, I found that it is customary in speeches such as these to reminisce about the good old days of political harmony and across-the-aisle camaraderie, and to lament the bitter, divisive partisan rancor that supposedly now weakens our democracy. Well, I can’t do that —
RUSH: Oh, right.
DELAY: Because partisanship, Mr. Speaker —
RUSH: Amen.
DELAY: — properly understood.
RUSH: Amen.
DELAY: — is not a symptom of democracy’s weakness but of its health and its strength, especially from the perspective of a political conservative.
RUSH: Damn A straight. He is so right; he may not even know how right he is. And partisanship has often been used as a criticism of the right by the left, and the way they want to say, “We gotta get rid of this partisanship.” If you get rid of your partisanship it means you become liberal; you agree with Democrats; you agree with the left, and he’s right. Every time one of these bigwigs leaves the House, they lament the, “Long lost days where camaraderie and getting along across the aisle, celebrating, going to barbecues, bar and so forth, after a session. Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan tipped a couple drinks every day after fighting like cats and dogs in the middle of the legislative process,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all that is a liberal’s lamenting the days when they ran the show. Here’s the second of our four bites.
DELAY: Liberalism, after all, whatever you may think of its merits is a political philosophy, and a proud one, with a great tradition in this country, with a voracious appetite for growth. In any place or any time, on any issue, what does liberalism ever seek, Mr. Speaker? More. More government, more taxation, more control over people’s lives and decisions and wallets. If conservatives don’t stand up to liberalism, no one will. And for a long time around here, almost no one did. Indeed, the common lament over the recent rise in political partisanship is often nothing more than a veiled complaint instead about the recent rise of political conservatism.
RUSH: Amen bro, number two. He’s nailed it. This is exactly right. When they talk about this partisanship, all they mean is that conservatives have too much power, too many conservatives in this place, too many people disagreeing with us, the libs say.
Gotta love ’em. Vicious partisanship is necessary to thwart the liberal monolith, but when liberals complain, it’s sour grapes because liberals have no power anymore.
One thing I think Dems haven’t discussed enough is that last paragraph in the New Hampshire phone jamming piece— how the Republicans have set up politics as a business. We’ve often noted that they have the wingnut welfare system through their phony “think” tanks and media outlets. And the K Street project is notorious. But there’s another factor involved that I hadn’t thought much about — all these satellite consulting firms that make money directly from the RNC — you know, the group that’s funded by millionaires and little old ladies on social security.
After Forbes lost, Raymond became executive director of the Republican Leadership Council. Around that time, he set up GOP Marketplace, which served as a middleman [my emphasis]for telemarketing services sought by Republican campaigns.
The firm was funded with a $246,000 loan from a group of elite Republicans. One of the investors was Raymond’s former boss, Barbour, who said at the time he was “convinced that GOP Marketplace will not only be a profitable business, but will also give Republicans an edge in the 2000 election.” Another investor was lobbyist Ed Rogers , who had served as executive assistant to former White House chief of staff John H. Sununu during the administration of George H.W. Bush.
The firm landed contracts worth nearly $2 million during the first two years, typically involving calls to determine where voters stood on issues and candidates. But it became involved in more aggressive tactics that drew the attention of federal prosecutors. The first sign of the questionable tactics was on Super Bowl Sunday in 2002. Raymond’s firm had been hired by the campaign of James Treffinger, a New Jersey Republican. Raymond’s company was asked to arrange phone calls that attacked one of Treffinger’s opponents on abortion without revealing that Treffinger was paying for the calls and to make those calls during the Super Bowl. “It was shenanigans,” Raymond said. “You put the call in at 6 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday,” which was designed to irk voters who didn’t want to be called away from the television. After complaints were raised, prosecutors interviewed Raymond about the matter, but he was not charged.
I suspect the Republicans aren’t the only ones who create lucrative “middleman” jobs for political consultants. But I’ve never heard of the Democrats doing this kind of “shenanigans” with the money, although it’s always possible. Nonetheless, it’s the GOP that has institutionalized this system and created a formidable national political machine out of it.
This next election is going to be a major test of this philosophy of polarization and the political machine that’s been carefully designed to capitalize on that. They are very, very good. They got sloppy up there in New Hampshire and left some fingerprints on their work, but that’s unusual. Generally, they are much smoother. And this next election is the ultimate challenge. They are dramatically unpopular. If they can pull it off, they will be political magicians. I have no reason to believe they won’t give it a good run.
Remember, Democrats are not only cowardly sissies who will give away the country to gay terrorists at the drop of a hat — they are hiring millions of illegal aliens to cast illegal votes. This is a known fact. They’ve been doing it for years, but they’ve really pumped up the operation this time because they are afraid the Republicans are going to deport all their voters. I swear it’s true. Rush told me. Somebody even called me on the phone and asked if I agreed with the Democrats doing that. I said no way.
.