Gabriel Sherman NYMag interviews foundational GOP ratfcvker Roger Stone:
Roger Stone, the veteran Republican political consultant, has been to every GOP convention since Nelson Rockefeller was booed down in 1964….
Officially, Stone was in town for work. This winter, he publicly announced he was quitting the GOP to become a libertarian and signed up to manage former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson’s quixotic White House bid. He was still mad that Ron Paul did not encourage his followers to back Johnson. “I find it interesting,” he said, “Ron Paul, who himself ran as a libertarian candidate in 1988, who only four years ago endorsed the Constitution candidate over John McCain, now says the liberty movement must stay within the Republican party. Why? For his idiot son? That makes no sense. To keep Rand Paul’s fund-raising list producing? So his son can now profiteer the way his father has? Ron Paul, the guy who talks constantly for principle, demonstrates he has none. If he did, he’d be for Gary Johnson.”…
Rick Santorum, he says, “is a religious fanatic and a state-ist. He wants the state to decide for the individual. He is about as far from Barry Goldwater as you can get.” Mitt Romney has no core. Paul Ryan talks a big game but is a product of the establishment. On August 17, Stone published a much-discussed piece of gossip on his website The Stone Zone claiming the Koch Brothers had handpicked Ryan. “The selection was cemented at the July 22nd fundraiser Koch held for Romney at the former’s sumptuous Hamptons estate,” Stone wrote. “Koch pledged $100 million more to C-4 and Super PAC efforts for Romney for Ryan’s selection.” Ryan’s voting record to Stone indicated he was someone who would help businessmen like the Kochs rather than stick to his small-government principles….
I asked him how the convention was shaping up. “Too early to say,” he replied. Romney, in Stone’s view, is a weak candidate. “He just was stronger and had more staying power than anyone else. He had to the good fortune to run against Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain. None of those guys were viable.” He said he was not at all impressed with the Romney campaign organization. “I see Fat John Sununu is back in the hierarchy. That’s a bad sign.”…
Speaking of whom, Erick “Redstate Strike Farce” Erickson has a theory, which is his:
…Back in 1992, John Sununu had been pushed out of the White House as Chief of Staff, but was still a committed partisan for George H. W. Bush. Ben Ginsberg was a lawyer with the Republican Party.
In 1992, Pat Buchanan challenged George H. W. Bush, forced his way into the convention as a speaker, and lots of conservatives rallied to him. It was a very bad year for Team George H. W. Bush and to this day social conservatives and Pat Buchanan get blamed.
This year, John Sununu and Ben Ginsberg are with Mitt Romney. They saw an upstart campaign from Rick Santorum, who rallied social conservatives like Pat Buchanan did in 1992. He got himself onto the convention stage with a speech, tonight, on welfare that a number of prominent Republicans are worried about.
The guys who’ve been old hands at this for a long time have gotten it in their heads that these rule changes Team Romney keeps coming up with is payback from Ginsberg and Sununu going back to 1992. It doesn’t matter whether it is true or not, they are muttering about it in the halls and it fits as the only rational explanation to a number of these guys.
The GOP has all but publicly announced that they’re depending on the Angry Old Bigot turnout, but they don’t seem to be capable of pleasing the Angry Old Bigot representatives.
As an aside, when John Sununu first appeared on the national stage, part of my job involved photocopying research articles at a midwestern university library. I first saw Sununu on tv right after copying a series of photos on the veterinary repair of prolapsed pig rectums. The resemblance — vast rolls of sweaty flesh never meant to see daylight, centered with a nasty little red wound — was unforgettable.
lamh35
According to Greg Sargent on twitter, Greg Sargent @ThePlumLineGS
So the narrative has been set. Ann’s speech is a success before it has even been given.
Tom Levenson
Oh dear FSM. Sometime I truly hope to write such a perfect description.
I bow in your direction. We are not worthy. We are not worthy.
dr. bloor
Old and jaded as I am, the written word seldom brings me to tears anymore. This is magnificent.
Davis X. Machina
@dr. bloor: And a helluva name for a band.
dr. bloor
@lamh35:
Maybe she’s just planning on letting her Lady Macbeth freak flag fly in all it’s Isaac-driven glory.
beltane
Remember all the stories in 2008 about possible PUMA holdouts among the delegates to the DNC? Now that there’s genuine division among the delegates to the RNC we hardly hear anything at all.
Josie
Your description of Sununu was a masterpiece. I cannot imagine who thought he would be an appealing spokesperson for Romney or anyone else. Seeing him on television gave me hope for the Obama campaign’s absolute victory.
Violet
Hilarious and brilliant. Perfect description.
@lamh35: Meh. Someone’s trying to up sell the speech itself because her delivery won’t be helping it any. Ann Romney always looks like someone most comfortable talking either to people of her own station or The Help. Asking her to talk to The Help like they’re Somebody isn’t going to work all that well.
mechwarrior oline
http://i.imgur.com/HA2Kv.jpg
I give you the RNC, with man singing for people to stand up next to him, who was so fat he couldn’t stand up and sung standing down.
Elizabelle
Prolapsed pig rectums, you say?
Will never think of Sununu Sr. without that image again.
Well done, Annie Laurie.
Spaghetti Lee
(Ron Paul) now says the liberty movement must stay within the Republican party. Why? For his idiot son? That makes no sense. To keep Rand Paul’s fund-raising list producing? So his son can now profiteer the way his father has?
Ye-owch! I bet Doctah Paul felt that one right in the Galts.
Lancelot Link
It makes me so glad to see the circular firing squad on the other side for once.
trollhattan
@dr. bloor:
Heh, indoozle. Soooo glad I’m not getting ready to eat dinner.
beltane
I refuse to watch the festivities but word is that Boehner and Reince Priebus (a good anti-fungal cream could cure that) are inebriated to the point of slurring their words.
Roger Moore
So he isn’t just an asshole, he’s an asshole who needs surgery.
Chris
For God’s sake. The Pauls are grifters. They talk up a great game about how Washington is spending and spending is evil, but they’ve never done anything to stop the gravy train from stopping in their own state. Ron Paul has piled pork barrel spending for Texas onto bills he knew were going to pass, then vetoed them in order to maintain his bullshit purity image while still keeping his constituents happy. Rand Paul won in 2010, and one of his first actions was to reassure farmers in Kentucky that the dollars wouldn’t stop pouring in from Washington. The machine of big government isn’t about to stop operating because of them.
The Pauls aren’t “true believers” as their followers believe. They’re not even dangerous loons or fanatics as so many liberals, moderates and even conservatives believe. They’re just con artists. How the fuck so many people haven’t figured this out, I don’t know.
mechwarrior oline
@beltane:
Priebus has been getting worse all day and more animated as well.
Richard
The name Sununu automatically makes me think of Pazuzu, the demon who possessed the Linda Blair character in “the Exorcist”.
Steeplejack
I happened to notice that Andrew Sullivan is scheduled to be on The Colbert Report tonight. Just sayin’.
Also, I believe The Daily Show is going to be on site in Tampa this week.
g
Damn, this thing is blowing up in their face, isn’t it? No mystery guests can fix this.
KG
@Spaghetti Lee: my thoughts exactly.
@beltane: so, just like normal?
Elizabelle
Dueling website headlines:
WaPost: Ann Romney’s prime-time chance to show Mitt’s appeal
NYTimes: In Speech, Ann Romney Will Try to Humanize Mitt
Richard
@g:
The mystery guest will be Reagan’s corpse, animated by a robotic exoskeleton that was manufactured in China.
KG
@g: honestly, I’ve been hearing about the impending breakdown of the Republican Party since I was in high school and the Cold War was declared won. It feels like we are closer than we’ve ever been before, but I won’t believe it until I see it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Richard: For some reason, it makes me think of prolapsed pig rectums.
Anoniminous
The Internets. They are won.
Bubblegum Tate
According to the GOPpowergrab Twitterers, Sarah Palin just uncorked this gem: “Too many of these consultants are there for a season, not a reason.”
Uhhhh…Christmas? Jebus? Christmas Jebus?
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack:
Oh, I’d like to see that. Thank you for the head’s up.
Also interested in seeing the Kathleen Turner/Molly Ivins show. Sounds wonderful. Hoping Arena Stage has some reduced price day of performance tickets.
Shall we try to get some Juicers out on the town, if so?
raven
All the brown folks are down front but they can’t vote in the general!
RAM
Sununu–the asshole’s asshole. That’s probably the best concluding paragraph in the history of history.
Chris
@KG:
Well, it’s got to be true someday –
I was just a baby at the time, but I suspect liberals in the late eighties, like conservatives in the late forties, might still have been laboring under the delusion that the last president was just a freakish occurrence and that everything he’d done could be rolled right back the moment “one of us” was back in the White House. Nope, not so much. All coalitions self-destruct at some point, but it takes a good long while for them to run their course.
ETA – and even when they do, not all their accomplishments can be rolled back.
JGabriel
Anyone know where I can find a non-Doonesbury op-ed Garry Trudeau drew/wrote for The New York Times circa 1990-1991?
If you know the piece(s) I’m talking about, you’ll know why it’s not off-topic in a post about John Sununu.
.
Jon
Libertarians convinced me to be a “statist.”
JGabriel
__
__
via Elizabelle, Times Headline:
I thought Mormons didn’t believe in witchcraft. I mean, Ann’s gonna try to humanize Mitt through some sort of golem-like spell:
He’s not a robot anymore! HE’S ALIVE! BWAHAHA!
Right?
.
The Other Bob
I would like to participate in mocking the RNC endlessly, but that would require me to actually watch those traitorous bastards speak. Let me know what the plump guy screams about in the AM.
feebog
A little harsh on the poor pigs, but otherwise, woot!
mamayaga
@The Other Bob: I can’t watch the unfiltered thing either, but remembered the wonderful snarky liveblog the Guardian had for the Repug debates. Looked it up, and lo…
ETA: It’s here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/28/republican-national-convention-2012-live
jake the snake
@Jon:
Libertarians are as statist as any Bolshevick, they just want the state supporting their agenda and no one else.
Whenever some wingnut talks about statists, I just laugh.
Everyone is a statist in some way. Maybe the most truthful
comment from Roger Stone was about Rick Santorum’s statism.
SFAW
@JGabriel:
Re: the Romney Golem:
Well, if we change his name to “Met”, it might make Obama’s campaign easier.
Tom Q
@KG: Well, they’ve certainly declined to a major degree at the presidential level. At the time of the Cold War ending, the GOP had won five of six national elections, often by thumping margins; the Dems’ only win had been by a bare margin in ’76, with Watergate/stagflation/Vietnam collapse all working in their favor.
Since then, the Dems have won, in honesty, four of five (we all know Gore won 2000), and the GOP’s only win was by the margin of one state (’04). The Congress has floated around more, but that’s largely because the Southern Congressional delegation switched parties considerably later than the electoral college, meaning the Dems didn’t lose Congress till the 90s, but then regained it with a new coalition in ’06/’08.
Obviously I’m not ignoring what happened in ’10, but let’s see what happens to the House & Senate this time around. The GOP recapture could be a short-term thing, a la ’46/’48. In which case, assuming Obama’s also re-elected, you could certainly argue that the GOP majority which seemed omnipotent around 1990 is gone, with a mostly Dem dominance taking its place.
Elizabelle
@mamayaga:
Great catch, mamayaga.
Woof woof woof.
muddy
20+ years ago my roommate had a couple of pigs, and they had what I thought were hemorrhoids but now I realize it’s probably this prolapse thing. I can picture them clearly, and indeed they looked very like Sununu, from either end really. They were mean pigs (well, with a PITA I guess they would be) so I didn’t feel sad when we ate them. Never again though.
O O the little eyes, the wrinkled forehead, the irritable squeals… It’s perfect, and now I will have a nightmare, thanks a million!
Epicurus
“…vast rolls of sweaty flesh never meant to see daylight, centered with a nasty little red wound.” OK, but what did the pictures look like?
Just One More Canuck
Curiosity got the better of me, and I googled “prolapsed pig rectum” – the resemblance was uncanny.
Now for a few shots of tequila to cleanse my brain’s palate
muddy
@Just One More Canuck: You’re going to get a lot of unpleasant ads now.
Steeplejack
@JGabriel:
You’ll need to be a little more specific. I got a lot of hits with this in Google:
(And “1991,” too.)
Ash Can
OK, I know I’m commenting here on what’s most likely a dead thread (and after I’ve had a few), but I just have to say for the record that this easily makes the top ten awesomest thing I’ve seen on the Internet this year.
chuckieboy
I believe in evolution. Y’all have it backwards. A pigs asshole could not turn into a sununu. In nature a sununu always turns into a pigs asshole. The pigs deny this, tough shit, that’s Mother Nature for ya.