This is a good story from the Boston Globe that centers around one of the people involved in the NH phone jamming incident in '02.
http://www.boston.com/...
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.
He goes into more about the basic GOP philosophy inside...
``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."
The article is good and I recommend reading all of it, as he goes into more detail on the general attitude he and the other Republicans had while pulling off his stunt. The article closes with this
Raymond, who has switched to real estate investment, said the case cost him $500,000 in lost business and money spent on legal fees. ``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."
Implying he doesn't really see what he did was wrong, just that he wasn't careful enough about either doing something he would get caught for. At least he's out of politics now.
The fact that a Republican who was fairly well-involved with the party establishment is being open about what the party is really all about is huge. If the MSM would report on this kind of thing, it would help people see that the GOP style of politics is just a manipulative money machine, using extreme partisanship and immoral tactics as a means of profit. Comments like this make it even more obvious exactly what's going on with situations involving Halliburton and other contractors.