Uncle Al’s Log Cabin Republicanism
So Roger Stone is bankrolling and organising Al Sharpton’s political campaigning. Quite a career change for Watergate alumni Stone, who began his career organising CREEP (the Committe to Re-Elect the President). Doubtless CREEP’s burglaries and illegal surveillance in support of Nixon’s campaigning was obviously a valuable early educational experience. So much so that today “state-of-the-art sleazeball” Stone is a fan of various jack boot thug strategies, and recently deployed a mob of Republican brownshirts to close down the Florida vote recount, thus ensuring that the Al Gore victory could not be recorded and the issue would move to the Supreme Court for Bush’s anointment.
Stone played a pivotal role in putting together Sharpton’s pending application for federal matching funds, getting dollars in critical states from family members and political allies at odds with everything Sharpton represents. He’s also helped stack the campaign with a half-dozen incongruous top aides who’ve worked for him in prior campaigns. He’s even boasted about engineering six-figure loans to Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN) and allowing Sharpton to use his credit card to cover thousands in NAN costs – neither of which he could legally do for the campaign.
Just two hours after a near riot outside the counting room, the Miami-Dade canvassing board voted to shut down the count … The screaming, the pounding on doors and the alleged physical assaults on Democrats suddenly made a bemused public queasy … What the world watched was a G.O.P. melee … Luis Rosero, a Democratic observer, claims he was punched and kicked. Republicans dispute the charges, but video cameras caught scenes of activism that had morphed into menace. The organizers in the RV outside, who G.O.P. protesters have told Time were led by hardball Washington strategist Roger Stone, had phone banks churning out calls to Miami Republicans, urging them to storm downtown.