The Eclipse of Reason

James Tobin was the RNC's Regional Director for New England in 2002. He then went on to become the New England Campaign Chair for Bush/Cheney '04. A few weeks ago Tobin was found guilty of coordinating a phonejamming scheme that targeted five Democrat call centers, and a volunteer firefighter's station. The calls were meant to keep the groups from being able to contact voters that had requested rides to the polls in Manchester, NH. The goal was to limit Dem turnout out, and it might have had a small impact on John Sununu’s defeat of Jeanne Shaheen (D) for a Senate seat.

By the way, the RNC demonstrated its commitment to clean and fair elections by paying Tobin’s legal fees, which went well over a million dollars.

What’s interesting (other that the fact that this is one of the rare instances where the shadowy world of Republican intimidation and suppression of voters and rigging of elections actually came to light) is who Tobin was talking to.

Phone records released in court on Monday show that Tobin made around two dozen calls to the White House within three days of the election day—which is of course the three days that the plan was conceived, implemented and then halted. The RNC is claiming that these calls only represented “routine” election business (a statement that was supposed to be a defense, but could also be seen as an admission of what most of us already suspect).

Whether it was routine or not, the Democrats have filed a civil suit against Tobin and a few others and are now planning to “ask a federal judge Tuesday to order GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the phone jamming in a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud.

Now maybe this was routine business, but the RNC and the Republican Senate Campaign Committee both have different phone numbers than the White House.

For some reason this news did not come out during the trial, but it’s not too late for it to develop into something really big over the next few months.

At worst it will just become another part of the steady drumbeat of criminal investigations circling around the Republican power structure in Washington.

Here’s the article.

(On a side note: Tobin’s boss who supposedly didn’t know anything about anything, has just been hired by everyone’s favorite fundamentalist: John McCain.)