New Hampshire GOP phone-jammer Allen Raymond sits down at TPMCafe’s Table for One this week to discuss his new book, How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative.
Raymond went to jail for his role in the notorious 2002 election scheme to block get out the vote calls from a pro-Democratic group by tying up the phone lines with inbound calls.
In his first post, an unapologetic Raymond asserts that political operatives are paid to win, not to serve as moral compasses:
As a Republican campaign operative at the Republican National Committee it was drilled into me that election law attorneys serve the purpose identifying the bright line of the law so it could be taunted but not crossed. Anybody who has a problem with that or doesnât get it doesnât understand America. America is about self interest, within the rule of law. Thatâs where I erred.
Raymond will be guest-blogging at Table for One all this week.
Fred Kaplan, on Newsweek‘s report that President Bush disowned the Iran NIE in meetings last week with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert:
This remark has three baleful consequences. First, it can’t help but demoralize the intelligence community. NIEs are meant, ultimately, for only one reader, the president; and here’s the president telling another world leader that he doesn’t believe it because, well, he doesn’t agree with it.
Second, it reinforces the widespread view that the president views intelligence strictly as a political tool: When it backs up his policies, it’s as good as gold; when it doesn’t, it’s “just guessing.” This result is that all intelligence is degraded and devalued, at home and abroad. Let’s say that six months from now Bush publicizes an NIE concluding that Iran has resumed its nuclear-weapons program or that, say, North Korea is reprocessing more plutonium. Given that he pooh-poohed an NIE that rubbed against his own views, why should anyone take him seriously for embracing an NIE that confirms them?
Third, by telling Olmert that it’s all right to ignore the NIE, Bush is in effect telling him that Israel should go ahead and behave as if its findings had never been published. Hirsh reports that, when Olmert was asked whether he felt reassured by Bush’s words, he replied, “I am very happy.”
I don’t usually speak out on behalf of particular candidates. But tomorrow is Mitt Romney’s rendezvous with destiny in Michigan. So I’d like to encourage all TPM Readers, tomorrow morning, to take a moment of silence to send positive thoughts to Mitt Romney and his Michigan field organization or positive karmic energy by whatever means you’re most capable of using.
Otherwise, it could be the end of the line for Mitt’s march on the White House.
For my part, I’ll be focusing all my available chakra energy on Mitt at 9:00 AM tomorrow morning.
Iraq Defense Minister: We’ll need you guys here until at least 2018.
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Richard Cohen gives Obama a “test” on Louis Farrakhan.
Please send in examples of demonstrable falsehoods in Cohen’s recent columns.
Late Update: MJ Rosenberg has more on Cohen’s signing on with the ‘get the Jews scared of Obama’ crowd.
It hasn’t gotten that much press attention. But today’s Michigan primary could decide the Republican nomination. Mitt Romney has staked everything on winning in Michigan, pulling funds out of South Carolina and Florida. And the polls have him neck-n-neck with the GOP’s latest frontrunner John McCain. We’ll be counting down the results live tonight at TPM. And in today’s episode of TPMtv we give you a primer on what to expect …
How long is an “enduring” U.S. presence in Iraq meant to last? The devil is in that detail.
WaPo‘s departing John Solomon: I plan to do “fair and balanced” journalism at the Washington Times.
With John McCain now firmly in the position of frontrunner and possibly on track to come close to settling the matter in Michigan tonight, is it time to revisit the fact that McCain considered and even got into preliminary talks about switching parties back in President Bush’s first year in office? Before Bush became Mr. 9/11, that is.