Like a toxic rain on polluted soil, the RNC is bringing all sorts of teratogenic invertebrates wriggling to the surface. Mark Warren, at Esquire, chats with Roger Stone:
TAMPA, Fla. — Just as this thing was becoming no fun, bless my soul, the last of the great ratfkers arrived. You can have your Republican pieties, because Roger Stone is here, and he is being Roger Stone all over the place. Dead-eyed and dapper, so much history in one three-button seersucker suit (“Hard to find the three-button,” he says) and a thick head of hair implants the color of straw, the Nixon aide and life-long juvenile delinquent made the rounds in the Republican hall on Tuesday night. There are bullet-headed hoards here this week, walking with their chests out, who think they know something of politics, even of hardball, and I saw many of them breeze right by this man without a glance. Fools. A walking master class in the dark arts of political castration (just ask Eliot Spitzer), Stone is here this week “observing.”
He is actually on a mission for former New Mexico governor and Republican presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who is now the Libertarian standard-bearer. He says that Johnson will likely be on the ballot in all fifty states, and is polling in the high single digits in enough of them to actually factor in the outcome of the election.
“Johnson is polling at 9 percent in Arizona [according to PPP], and it’s all gonna come out of Romney’s hide, and he’s at 6 percent in Wisconsin (according to the Reason poll), which is all out of Obama’s hide. I am helping Gary figure out where to put his emphasis.” He points toward the convention floor. “Snubbing Ron Paul’s people today, and not counting their votes, was just magical, wonderful for us,” he says beaming, arms spread wide as if to say come to papa. “A bunch of people are gonna leave here very angry. To not announce Ron Paul’s total from the chair is an insult. He won those delegates, he’s entitled to — shall we say — be defeated gracefully. They are angry, and we are going to pick up those people.”…
Why wouldn’t Ron Paul let you into his speech?
“Because Ron would like to hand the franchise off to Rand. The Pauls are about money. They raised $47 million, and at least 5 of it was spent on the campaign. And a lot of the rest of it went into the pockets of Rand Paul family members and other hangers-on. It’s a great franchise, so we’re gonna try to hand the franchise to the idiot son. It’s not going to work, because when this is over, I think Johnson will have greater cachet…
“There’s going to be dissatisfaction with Mitt Romney at the end of this convention. So there’s an opportunity. I really think that in six swing states, Johnson’s going to determine who wins this race. In Oregon and Colorado, where they have marijuana on the ballot, in New Mexico, quite obviously, in New Hampshire, in Nevada, in Iowa — it’s enough to make all the difference. Plus, that doesn’t even speak to the fact that Romney leads Obama by one point in Florida today, and Johnson’s getting 2.3 percent of the vote. It’s not a lot of votes, but it’s enough.
“So the party’s going to regret not allowing Johnson into the debates. All the national chairman had to do was pick up the phone to CNN and say, What are you doing, this guy’s a reputable candidate, why isn’t he being allowed? But they didn’t give us the time of day. And in politics, payback’s are a bitch.”
I assume the Obama campaign has all available watchful eyes on Wisconsin, and I pray to Coyote the Trickster God that the Paulites aren’t sufficiently enamoured of Rand “Idiot Son” Paul to let Mr. Stone distract them from doing maximum damage to the coronation hopes of King Willard.
Speaking of skin-crawling bloodsuckers, Dennis G’s old nemesis Ralph Reed has fastened his lamprey mouthparts firmly into the Romney campaign’s treasure sacks, per Joe Hagan at NYMag:
Ralph Reed is definitely back. Six years ago, the eternally smooth-skinned and exquisitely coiffed Georgia Republican was tainted by dubious dealings with the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, Reed appeared reborn, embraced with open arms at Grover Norquist’s First National Center Right Meeting — a kind of right-wing revival tent featuring conservative grand dame Phyllis Schlafly and Steven Law, president of Super-PAC American Crossroads.
Resplendent in a green plaid jacket and pink tie, Reed described his plans for registering over 9 million evangelicals in the coming weeks. He’s also aiming robocalls and door-knockers at nearly 2 million evangelical households in Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Florida, and Virginia….
Further excerpts withheld for the sake of those who may still be eating or anticipating their dinners, but it’s well worth reading the whole thing to see just how corrupt and incestuous the remnant Republican “establishment” has really become.
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Apart from viewing the antics in Tampa (with revulsion and scorn), what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Lord Jesus Perm
Taking a hammer drill to my skull so I won’t have to listen to the RNC on TV while my wife watches.
Violet
Said this in the previous thread, but it’s a better fit here. Local wingnut radio talk show guy said about last night’s convention that it was, “a bunch of people you never heard of, Ann Romney and a fat guy. Ann Romney and a fat guy! What’s wrong with Ron Paul?” And then went on a five minute tear about why couldn’t they reach out to Ron Paul. His voters represent a helluva lot more votes than the demo-filler folks they’re having talk at the convention, and it’s a major fail that they couldn’t at least allow Ron Paul to speak. “What would be so bad about allowing Paul to speak? Yeah, so they don’t agree on everything. Let him talk!” Etc. Etc.
I’ve listened to this guy for awhile off and on and never pegged him to be a Ron Paul supporter at all. No idea what’s up with all that. Loved that he referred to Chris Christie as “a fat guy”.
Roger Moore
Is it any wonder that the Republicans have let Ralph Reed back into the fold? This is the party that was perfectly happy to rehabilitate Richard Nixon and turn over the reigns of power to his cronies during the Cheney Regency. Reed is small potatoes.
Litlebritdifrnt
I know I am a Brit and shouldn’t say but honestly if I hear American Exceptionalism again this week I am going to vomit.
Bobby Thomson
Stone’s whole purpose has been to tell tales out of school about who’s been getting their freak on at swingers clubs and such. I don’t see him bringing much to the presidential race.
Cassidy
Green and pink? I used to think Reed was in the close by not with that kind of poor fashion sense.
Chris
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Well, Mister Brit, I’m an American, and I concur wholeheartedly.
Violet
Hmmm….
This sort of thing doesn’t increase confidence in the Secret Service.
Josie
Good grief! These people really are zombies! You think they have been passed over, died, found criminally liable, whatever, and they just keep reappearing. Will we ever escape their evil clutches, or does the struggle just keep going on forever? I would love to see at least one of them totally rejected and defeated before I die.
Linda Featheringill
Ralph Reed, with his eternal youth, is a real “Picture of Dorian Gray.”
What a toad! Always has been. Yuck.
Suzan
Why would Johnson take all six points from Obama in Wisconsin? Maybe I missed something. Help me out?
Lurker
@Josie:
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, so keep fighting.
Roger Moore
@Suzan:
Because he says so, that’s why. My impression is that third party candidates like Johnson generally do a lot better in early polls than they do in the election. In the polls, they’ll frequently pull in a few undecideds and some voters who weakly favor one candidate or the other. As the election gets closer, those undecided and weakly favoring voters wind up picking sides, and usually not the third party candidates they mentioned to the pollsters. Talk about how important they can be as a spoiler is just third party spin.
Amanda in the South Bay
No one is mentioning Obama on Reddit?
Tom Q
Just wanted to say that, when I was 15 years old — in the summer of ’67 — I was in a drama workshop, in which Roger Stone was also a participant. This was in my pre-political (otherwise known as teenage) period, so I had no quarrel with his opinions/stances. But it’s worth noting that everyone in the group thought he was a major-league asshole.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m pretty sure Mark Warren means “bullet-headed hordes.”
Maude
@SiubhanDuinne:
Are they hoarding their monies?
danielx
In one of those comebacks for which Washington is so justly famous…grifter gonna grift.
jheartney
Speaking as someone who’s been doing voter reg recently, I’m dubious about how much success this grifter will have reaching his goal. Getting registrations is a slow, labor-intensive process, and you don’t build up the organization for doing it overnight. I suspect Mr. Reed is more about taking Adelson money than he is about fulfilling on these ambitious promises.
Frankensteinbeck
@Suzan:
This is what political insiders call a ‘lie’. As @Roger Moore notes it is essential for these third parties to talk themselves up, but it is also essential that they claim to be something other than the disaffected rump of one party. Like the Tea Party, the Libertarians have to show evidence that they are a true movement of independent idealists. This is done by another process political insiders call ‘making shit up’.
russell
LOL. The penny drops.
I guess it depends on who’s getting their freak on, and what particular freak is being gotten on.
Yutsano
@russell: I hate to break roger’s heart, but Oregon is nowhere near a swing state. All hail the People’s Republic of Portlandia!!
sb
Not viewing the antics in Tampa. Beach, walk the rescue, hug the wife and kid, grade papers, bed.
Paul Ryan? Who’s he?
Brachiator
Watching Arsenic and Old Lace. The extra frisson is that I am imagining all the dumbass Republicans being buried in some old ladies’ cellar.
Or is it that GOP ideas are as nutty as a crazy uncle who imagines himself to be Teddy Roosevelt?
AA+ Bonds
*sad trombone*
AA+ Bonds
spending a little time this evening revving up the Paulsters elsewhere, why did the Republicans cheat the Ron Paul majority, he shoulda been VP, etc. I suggest everyone follow suit, great fun
Roy G.
I’d like to share what I posted on teh FB earlier:
Just got back from our first parents meeting at our son’s elementary school, Buena Vista, on Valencia in the Mission (ed: SF); bilingual, multicultural, tolerant of all family types, focused on the importance of learning facts, building community and mutual respect and understanding – in other words, the complete opposite of what is being preached at the Republican National Convention.
1badbaba3
“Idiot son”? That’s a might harsh. And more than a little hurtful.
How’s about tube steak?
Fart sniffing reprobate?
Shit-talking crypto-nazi?
Tata
@SiubhanDuinne:
And “payback’s” should be a simple plural.