Fallen star blames self, GOP tactics

[YankeyMCC]

(snip)

WASHINGTON -- For nearly a decade, Allen Raymond stood at the top ranks of Republican Party power.

(snip)
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.
(snip)

(snip)
``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."
(snip)

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/06/10/fallen_star_blames_self_gop_tactics/

[murielm99]

1. Monetized?

Is that a word? I have never heard it.

I know what he means, but why do these fuckers always have to invent words?

[Demit]

3. Monetize, perfectly fine word. Dictionary-approved. :)

[postulater]

5. Yeah, like Truthiness!

[Demeter]

7. I Think It's A Shorthand for Cash & Carry Politics

in a word; bribes, influence buying, corporate politics, etc.

[bananas]

12. Yes, it's a real word

"Monetization may also refer to ... selling a possession, charging for something that used to be free or making money on a goods and services that were previously unprofitable."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_monetization

It's used a lot: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=monetized&btnG=Google+Search

edit:
"For example, you'll often hear Internet marketers talk about "monetizing website visitors." This is another way of saying that the marketers are trying to figure out a way of making money from website visitors, such as through advertising, e-commerce, etc."
http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/monetized

[bklyncowgirl]

2. "You always want to polarize somebody"

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."

That's it in a nutshell the Republican campaign philosophy.

1. Find an issue that your supporters are wildly passionate about and that ordinary people have mixed feelings about.

2. Don't worry about attracting moderates. Just make sure they stay home or decide that your guy is the lesser of two evils and vote reluctantly.

3. Make your opponent unacceptable to anyone except hard core partisans. It might help if your opponent says something stupid, oh like, "you don't have to have papers to vote in an election" or "I voted for it before I voted against it" that can be taken out of context and used to paint an unflattering picture. It doesn't have to be true. Al Gore never said he invented the Internet but millions of people believed he said it.

4. Define the character of your opponent. Ordinary People hate snooty rich guys, arrogant know it alls and conniving calculating politicians. Make sure that voters believe that your opponent is any (and if you're good) all of these things.

5. Not chasing after moderate voters allows your candidate to stand as a "Man of Principle". "You may not agree with me but at least you know where I stand" may well win over more moderates than shameless pandering.

It's quite simple really yet somehow all too many Democrats have simply failed to catch on.

[maseman]

11. KKKarl Rove's brain in a nutshell

Thanks BKLYNCOWGIRL. You summed it up very nicely.

[Gman]

15. If Democrats were to only learn point #5

we would win more elections.

[calimary]

19. Can I second that? "You may not agree with me, but you know where I stand"

was a KILLER punchline that bush himself used in 2004. And it WORKED.

Why can't OUR guys take a page from that, and try stuff that WORKS??? Frankly, I'm beginning to worry that they're gonna blow it in November. AGAIN.

[bklyncowgirl]

23. I hear you. In the effort to become all things to all people ...

you end up being whatever your opponent wants you to be.

I'm not saying all Democrats do this--Russ Feingold for example is a man who will take strong positions--but all too many of them do and it kills them. Better the devil you know than the devil who won't say who he really is.

[Gman]

25. I'm not worried because I'm convinced

the Democrats will blow it in November.

[blondeatlast]

21. This should be a stand-alone post. "Subversive Political Strategy 101"

And how many at DU are falling hook, line, and sinker for these?

Excellent post.

[bklyncowgirl]

22. Thanks it seems pretty obvious to me.

Drum up the base. Get everybody else disgusted with both candidates. They win. America loses.

[IndyOp]

24. A couple of thoughts -

Find an issue that your supporters are wildly passionate about and.... Don't worry about attracting moderates. Just make sure they stay home or decide that your guy is the lesser of two evils and vote reluctantly.

Hence the 25+ year GOP campaign to suppress the vote:

Paul Weyrich, Father of the Reagan Revolution, co-founder of the HERITAGE FOUNDATION, and the Free Congress Foundation speaking in private to a church to Republican activists said this: “How many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome? Good government! They want everybody to vote! I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections, quite candidly, goes up as voting populace goes down.” (Sorry no link - this is from an audio tape that Thom Hartmann plays just about everyday on his radio show. You can stream it from the White Rose Site 24/7.)

My right-wing degree By Jeff Horwitz

May 25, 2005 | One recent Sunday, at Morton Blackwell's LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE, a dozen students meet…. All are earnest, idealistic and as right wing as you can get. They take careful notes as instructor Paul Gourley teaches them how to rig a campus mock election. "Can anyone tell me," asks Gourley, "why you don't want the polling place in the cafeteria?" Stephen, a shy antiabortion activist sitting toward the rear of the class, raises his hand: "Because you want to suppress the vote?" The students, strait-laced kids from good colleges, seem unconvinced. The lesson -- that with sufficient organization, the act of voting becomes less a basic right than a tactical maneuver -- doesn't sit easy with some students at first. Gourley, a charismatic senior from South Dakota and the treasurer of the COLLEGE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE, assures them: "This is not anti-democracy. This is not shady. Just put somewhere where you might have to put a little bit of effort into voting." The rest, Gourley explains, is just a matter of turnout.

There is no better place to master the art of mock-election rigging -- and there is no better master than Morton Blackwell, who invented the trick in 1964 and has been teaching it ever since. Blackwell's half-century career in conservative grass-roots politics coincides neatly with the fortunes of the conservative movement: He was there when Goldwater lost, when Southern voters abandoned the Democratic Party in droves, and when the Moral Majority began its harvest of evangelical Christian voters. In the 1970s, Blackwell worked with conservative direct-mail king Richard VIGUERIE; in 1980, he led Reagan's youth campaign.

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/05/25/blackwell/index.html

Define the character of your opponent.
And remember the useful addition to this: Always accuse your opponent of possessing the negative character traits that you KNOW you have -- snooty, dirty politician, wealthy/elite...

[Supersedeas]

31. driving the Wedge between American's

[Rose Siding]

4. "Things come up where you need to push the envelope"

He's defining a horrible attack on democracy, yet he seems to be seeing what he did as some sort of bare technicality.

snip>
``Things come up where you need to push the envelope," he said of the New Hampshire case. ``The question is whether you step over the bright line. I took steps to make sure I didn't, but unfortunately that wasn't good enough and I paid a steep price."

[formercia]

8. A tactical error

but the strategic goals remain the same. Unrepentent asshole.

[Judi Lynn]

16. That's such gibberish, isn't it? It makes no sense whatsover.

What is this "bright line?" His efforts to NOT step over it weren't good enough? What? Hello? :silly: :crazy:

They'll do ANYTHING to keep from admitting what scums they are.

Here's the New Hampshire Phone Jamming Timeline. There's an entry showing money going into the New Hampshire Republican State Committee from Tom Delay's Americans for a Republican Majority, as well as checks from Jack Abramoff clients, then checks being sent from the Committee to the phone jammers.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/phonejamming.php

[MissWaverly]

20. how did he take steps to avoid criminality, he just got out of jail

Is this another case of Denial, like DeLay-it's not me, I am innocent, it's those dirty liberals?

[chelsea0011]

6. And he shows no remorse. I get the feeling he would do it again

in a heartbeat. Hopefully the civil suit turns up something and the talking TV media gives it a mention.:sarcasm:

[Demeter]

9. They Need a Dose of RICO

the laxative of dirty politics.

[quaoar]

10. This part explains a lot

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.

[ariellyn]

14. A ruthless "organization" brings the Mafia to mind. n/t

[Oak2004]

30. The CR-ization ofthe Republican Party, in action

What this says to me is that the College Republicans of the 1970s are now in full, immature, control of the national party.

When I was a Republican, the party itself was fairly mainstream in its approach and attitudes (with individual exceptions, mostly among the Nixonites), but the College Republicans were a whole 'nother story. Politics for the CRs was all about ruthlessness. And the CRs were no campus social club -- it was where future leaders of the Republican Party were trained how to run a campaign.

We weren't just expected to show up and canvass or make phone calls for a candidate every couple of years -- we were taught political strategy, every year, all year round (I am unaware of anything equivalent on such a scale, even to this day, for Democrats, which is unfortunate). The written literature was all about how to apply sophisticated marketing techniques to campaigning, and it was nothing the CRs wouldn't mind the public seeing. The unwritten "education", the stuff that wasn't attributable, was a whole 'nother story. The emphisis was on winning at any cost and pushing that envelope, with a tacit understanding that anything you didn't get caught at was okay by the CRs.

This CR attitude wasn't then prevalent in the "grown-up" party (maybe we needed more adult supervision?). But I did begin to see it in the party itself beginning in the 1980s, and certainly in the 1990s. I can't say anything about the party in the 2000s, because by then it had become obvious to me that there was no place left for a liberal Republican, especially for one who no longer lived in New York State (the last bastion of liberal Republicanism in America), but I'm pretty sure of what I'm seeing: the overgrown adolescents are running the party now -- and unfortunately, the nation, too.

[ariellyn]

13. Wow. "Polarize" and "push the envelope"

Yeap. He's a republicant alright.

Too bad America is dying due to these miscreants.

I bet he, like Ann Coulter, is being congratulated and celebrated somewhere for their heroic efforts. When we ask why they don't enlist in the war, we musn't forget that they are already soldiers in the war on Democracy.

[slor]

17. Thanks for posting n/t

[grytpype]

18. Monetize = a perfect description of Repug politics.

They are in politics for the money. There are lots of ways to make money as a politician:

1. Cutting your own taxes
2. Giving yourself government contracts
3. Raising funds for your campaign
4. Taking bribes

That's what Repugs do. And that's ALL they do.

[wordpix2]

26. SAT verbal question---telemarketing: media as GOP Marketplace : Fox News

snip: 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 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.

[maryallen]

27. "Majority?"

My a** ...

Diebold machines; gerrymandered districts; "friendly" Secretaries of State (who remove the "dead" and "felons" from voting rolls; switched/moved polling places; 12 hour waits in line); etc., etc. .... is a more likely truth.

[Zorra]

28. The novel "Lord of the Flies" characterizes the primitive, unevolved

nature of members of the republican party:

"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 are nothing but greedy, self-serving, treasonous maggots.

I genuinely believe that they would eat their own children live on television if the price was right.

[1932]

29. So they admit the truth only after being felonized.