Allen Raymond, the fellow convicted for arranging the jamming of New Hampshire phones on election day in 2002 is out of prison and talking to the Boston Globe.
Maybe his having been "raised in a liberal Democratic family," accounts for his spilling the beans about what Republicans are up to.
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."
Since the Republican National Committee has spent over three million dollars defending the perpetrators of the phone scam, one might think Raymond and his cohorts would have the grace to express their appreciation by keeping their mouths shut.
On the other hand, this whole incident continues to raise a stink. Karl Rove himself is coming to New Hampshire next week to help the New Hampshire Republicans restock their coffers for the fall campaign. And while the State Democrats have filed a civil suit to find out what the connection between operatives in the White House and the phone jammers might have been, Republicans feeding the media with the particulars of this event suggests there's something we are supposed to be distracted from. Why focus on a failed enterprise that was short-circuited almost as soon as it got under way? What else was going on to turn the pre-election polls around and hand the election to the under-dog?
It's tempting to believe that a Republican operative is an idiot, but that probably wouldn't be smart. While the Rove gang has elevated misdirection to a high art and the corporate media continues to be gullible, we need to do better and focus on checking the results of each and every election--not once, but twice and with random audits.