Now Playing at Reason.tv: Dirty Tricks as the Grand Tradition of American Politics, featuring Roger Stone
December 30, 2007, 7:56am
On November 28, reason sat down for a discussion with one of the masters of the dark arts of politics, Roger Stone. Many people in Washington, D.C. talk about "hardball politics," but no one has done so with as much skill, creativity, flair, and stomach-turning dedication as veteran political strategist and dirty tricks expert Roger Stone.
Beginning with his first disinformation campaign in grade school (ironically, aimed at his later idol, Richard Milhous Nixon), Stone learned the ropes as a teenager at Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President (C.R.E.E.P.) and has spent the last 30 years in the political shadows, playing a major role in the "Brooks Brothers Riot" during the 2000 Florida recount and waging a highly public ongoing battle with Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D-N.Y.). As a battle-hardened and scandal-heavy veteran of eight national presidential campaigns, Stone understands the skulduggery and strategems of the modern political campaign like no one else. That's one reason he was dubbed "a grotesque" by reason's Nick Gillespie in The Washington Post: Stone lays open all the grimy and gritty machinations through which politicians work the system--and voters--to gain power.
What he has to say will keep you on the edge of your seat--especially if you lay awake at night wondering how some of the bums that govern us manage to sneak into office in the first place.
To watch Stone's comments, just click on the image above or go here.
pgt | December 30, 2007, 6:29pm | #
Dondero, you are even stupider than I thought.
Ann Stone ?????
To prove we have seen more than enough of Ann Stone, forever, I have one name to throw at you.
Janet Rzewnicki.
Those familiar with Delaware politics might remember when this pro choice woman was a rising star in the GOP there. Googling her name, the first entry I found was a Wikipedia entry about Tom Carper, which contained this paragraph about his reelection as Governor.
"Running for a second term in 1996 he faced Republican State Treasurer Janet C. Rzewnicki. Knowing that she needed a major issue to have a chance of defeating him, she repeated the mistake made by Thomas B. Evans, Jr. in Carper's first race for the U. S. House of Representatives. Three weeks before the election
Ann Stone, the chairwoman of the Republicans for Choice, came to Wilmington and repeated rumors she had heard of divorce proceedings, domestic violence, and secret court filings. These were immediately and emphatically refuted by Carper's wife, Martha, and her employer, the DuPont Company. In an extraordinary intervention, the Chief Judge of Family Court, Vincent J. Poppiti, wrote in a formal order, that "there have been no filings at any time...regarding the marriage of...Carper." Even the Republican state chairman, Basil Battaglia weighed in, saying, "This is not the way we do politics in Delaware." Carper won the election in a landslide, and Rzewnicki was ousted from her position as State Treasurer two years later, when her term expired."
Ann Stone is the first person who comes to my mind when I think of the phrase "Lord Protect me from my friends."
You can have her, and Giuliani. Just don't try promoting either of them to libertarians.
