{"id":14340,"date":"2008-01-24T11:13:06","date_gmt":"2008-01-24T16:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14340.html"},"modified":"2008-01-24T11:13:06","modified_gmt":"2008-01-24T16:13:06","slug":"roger-stone-hillary-clinton-and-citizens-united-not-timid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/roger-stone-hillary-clinton-and-citizens-united-not-timid\/","title":{"rendered":"Roger Stone, Hillary Clinton, and ‘Citizens United Not Timid’"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may not know Roger Stone, but I’m sure you know his work. He is a right-wing hatchet-man extraordinaire, brazenly cynical, and free of any sense of decency or honor in a political career that began as Nixon’s “youngest Watergate dirty trickster.” Various reporters have referred<\/a> to him as “a state of the art sleaze-ball,” “an extreme rightwing sleazeball,” and the “boastful black prince of Republican sleaze.” (You might notice the common thread among the decriptions.)<\/p>\n

Stone has, to one extent or another, dabbled in at least eight presidential campaigns, including Reagan’s, Bush’s, Dole’s, and Bush’s, including helping lead street protests in Florida against a recount in 2000.<\/p>\n

Now Stone has a new project — called “Citizens United Not Timid<\/a>.” If you take the first letter of each word, you get a sense of what Stone’s up to.<\/p>\n

Stone wants everyone to understand the mission of the organization, simply and elegantly captured in its artwork, which Stone shows us. It features a red inverted triangle at the bottom of which, is a blue triangle with a white star in the middle. At first glance, it kind of looks like the Puerto Rican flag, or Captain America’s martini glass. Stone designed it himself, and on second glance, it’s meant to whisper, not scream, “special flower.”<\/p>\n

The text underneath it reads “Citizens United Not Timid, a 527 Organization To Educate The American Public About What Hillary Clinton Really Is.” The artwork and text are, it turns out, the entirety of the “education.” Stone says the website will feature an attractive model in the organization’s T-shirt, which can be yours for a “donation” of $25 or more. […]<\/p>\n

“The more people go to the site, the more people buy the T-shirts,” Stone explains to the troops. “The more people buy the T-shirts, the more people wear the T-shirts. The more people wear the T-shirts, the more people are educated. Consequently, our mission has been achieved.” Though neither the word itself nor even the acronym is ever mentioned, “it’s one-word education. That’s our mission. No issues. No policy groups. No position papers. This is a simple committee with an unfortunate acronym. Addendums, deletions? Everybody’s down?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stone settled on “Citizens United Not Timid,” only after failing to “come up with words for B.I.T.C.H.”
\n
\nFirst, on the specifics, Paul Kiel details<\/a> the 527 chicanery at play here.<\/p>\n

Stone walks the Standard’s Matt Labash through how he set up his 527. All that’s needed is a name. He chose Jeff “Noodles” Jones, a local bartender\/DJ in Miami, to serve as the group’s chairman. It doesn’t matter that Noodles doesn’t have much of a clue about anything — in fact, that’s the point. As long as he doesn’t have a criminal record (a mistake Stone almost made when selecting a chairman), he’s OK. Voila! Attack group. <\/p>\n

“A 527 doesn’t have a wife,” Stone explains. “It doesn’t have a brother-in-law who knows a lot about politics, or a union president who calls and doesn’t like the color of the suit, or bimbo eruptions. It’s the perfect candidate, because it has no personal characteristics.”<\/p>\n

No personal characteristics indeed. The group’s IRS filings are studiedly anonymous, disclosing their purpose as \u201cTo educate the public about the importance of moral character and integtiry [sic] in those who hold public office.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, the irony of Stone misspelling “integrity” is worth appreciating in its own right.<\/p>\n

And second, I can’t help but wonder if Republicans realize the likelihood of something like this crass and ugly attack backfiring. According to the Weekly Standard piece, Stone wants Democrats to know that “if Hillary is the nominee, a hard 527 rain is going to fall.”<\/p>\n

I think Dems know that, but does Stone appreciate what these attacks do among Dems? The Clintons have been well-regarded in Democratic circles for years, but they didn’t become genuine icons until the right-wing smear machine tried to destroy them. Bill Clinton’s popularity among Dems was strong, but it didn’t really move until Newt Gingrich came along, and it didn’t really soar until Ken Starr arrived on the scene.<\/p>\n

The Clintons have been blessed, in this sense, by extraordinarily easy-to-loathe enemies, who only help rally the Democratic troops behind the Clintons.<\/p>\n

Given this, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if “Citizens United Not Timid” does more to help Hillary than hurt her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may not know Roger Stone, but I’m sure you know his work. He is a right-wing hatchet-man extraordinaire, brazenly cynical, and free of any sense of decency or honor in a political career that began as Nixon’s “youngest Watergate dirty trickster.” Various reporters have referred to him as “a state of the art sleaze-ball,” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}