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It seems like Ted Cruz is quite deadly serious about playing hardball with his fellow GOP 2016 presidential primary opponents based on who he's hiring to be his campaign consultant:
Controversy has defined Roe’s career.
In 2006, he ran TV ads chastising a disabled candidate for working for an adult publication. She actually sold ads for a company that owned that magazine and others.
He connected former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes with “San Francisco values” during her unsuccessful effort to oust Graves.
He’s hired operatives to track opponents with video cameras, leading some to complain of unnecessary provocation and to file complaints with police. His deep research into his opponents’ personal records is legendary. He’s been accused of orchestrating a lawsuit to gain access to a candidate’s personal papers.
In 2014, a Roe mailer Photoshopped a candidate “in the classic Marlon Brando Godfather pose and likened him to a mobster,” according to The Dallas Morning News.http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article16663127.html
The Gadfly supposes that since ol' Ted has already cemented his reputation among both Democrats as well as many of his fellow Republicans as a sleazy, duplicitous con artist who will say or do anything to bully through his political agenda in Congress, then hiring a professional ratfucker like Jeff Roe to be your oppo-research hitman is par for the course and validation of those views.
Listen -- The Gadfly is not naive about politics. It is a rough and tumble sport and the bottom line is that there have to be winners as well as losers. That is all well and good providing that the playing field is level and everyone agrees to play by the same set of established ground rules.
But what has transpired since the Great Clinton Cock Hunt of the 1990's has been the wholesale transformation of American politics wherein candidates on one side would much prefer to talk about issues and policies that have a direct, real world impact on the lives of voters, and those on the other side would prefer to hire thugs like Jeff Roe to employ some of the most vicious forms of attacks to undermine and smear the personal character and reputations of their opposition.
Roe is in heavy demand primarily because the GOP candidates who are hiring guys like him know that their policy positions, if examined in the open light of day, are quite unpopular and not in the general public's best interest and therefore they desperately need somebody like Roe to deflect attention away from the glaring shortcomings of their own candidacy and the obnoxiousness of their own political agenda, as well as their self-serving motives.
Unfortunately for the vast majority of of Americans, it is a strategy that works all too well. There is no other creditable way to explain how it is that a major league, prevaricating asshole and political guttersnipe like Ted Cruz has risen to the position of power that he has. Cruz knows all too damn well that when your opponent is constantly on the defensive responding to a blizzard of lies, innuendo, misinformation and unfounded charges, they don't have time to implement their own honorable game plan of having an adult, rational and principled conversation about legitimate issues.
It is a dishearteningly sad commentary on the America political process in general for it highlights the repugnant prospect that a great many of our fellow Americans actually appear to find some measure of redeeming socio political value in their chosen candidates employing the tactics of lying, meanness and character assassination to win their way in to office.
And if anyone can explain coherently to The Gadfly just exactly how such an insidious and soulless form of politics being one of those defining characteristics which form the basis of our uniquely American brand"exceptionalism" is a good thing, The Gadfly is all fucking ears.
----TFG
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