Saturday, November 22, 2008

Dirty Rep Strategist Regrets Putting Bush In Office.



The proof that the Republican party is rotten to it's core is best illustrated by the fact that even Roger Stone now regrets the work he did to help Bush get elected.

Roger Stone is one of the last guys on Earth one would expect to feel guilty over an episode of rough and tumble politicking. As a self-admitted hit man for the GOP, Stone has had a hand in everything from Nixon's dirty tricks to Eliot Spitzer's resignation to spreading discredited rumors of a Michelle Obama “whitey” tape during the 2008 Democratic primaries. You might call Stone the Forrest Gump of scandal, popping up to play a bit part in the most notorious negative campaigns in recent history.

The capstone of Stone’s career, at least in terms of results, was the “Brooks Brothers riot” of the 2000 election recount. This was when a Stone-led squad of pro-Bush protestors stormed the Miami-Dade County election board, stopping the recount and advancing then-Governor George W. Bush one step closer to the White House. Though he is quick to rebut GOP operatives who seek to minimize his role in the recount, Stone lately has been having second thoughts about what happened in Florida.

"There have been many times I've regretted it,” Stone told me over pizza at Grand Central Station. “When I look at those double-page New York Times spreads of all the individual pictures of people who have been killed [in Iraq], I got to think, 'Maybe there wouldn't have been a war if I hadn't gone to Miami-Dade. Maybe there hadn't have been, in my view, an unjustified war if Bush hadn't become president.' It's very disturbing to me."
And he now publicly distances himself from some of the distasteful Bush activities that many Republicans have spent the last few years defending.
“I think across the board he's led the party to its current position, which means losing both houses of congress and now the White House,” Stone said. “How can you be conservative and justify wiretapping people without a warrant? We're supposed to be the party of personal freedom and civil liberties. Big brother listening in on your phone calls—I got a problem with that.”
This is why I have always argued that losing this election was going to lead to the collapse of the Republican party as we know it. For eight years party loyalists have felt forced to defend acts of blatant illegality, fiscal irresponsibility and a man who has led the nation to international pariah status.

Now, the sensible wing of the party must start to question whether or not they have strayed too far from the ideals which their party was set up to represent and this will lead to an inevitable confrontation with the Michelle Malkin loony wing of the party who feel that there is no lesson to be learned:

I’m getting a lot of moan-y, sad-face “What do we do now, Michelle?” e-mails.

What do we do now? We do what we’ve always done.

We stand up for our principles, as we always have — through Democrat administrations and Republican administrations, in bear markets or bull markets, in peacetime and wartime.

We stay positive and focused.

We keep the faith.

We do not apologize for our beliefs. We do not re-brand them, re-form them, or relinquish them. We defend them.

Now, even Roger Stone finds it impossible to defend the worst outrages which Bush indulged in. The Republicans are left with only the Michelle Malkins of this world thinking that all is well and that what the Republicans need to do is:

We lock and load our ideological ammunition.

We fight.

It sounds like a party run by bampots because that is exactly what it is. Even Roger Stone now sees that. The next four years are going to be very messy for the Republicans.

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