Professional GOP Swindlers

Posted on | December 28, 2012 | 12 Comments

It seems that David Dewhurst’s campaign manager broke Rule One of the Republican Party Operative Handbook: “Don’t get caught.”

AUSTIN — Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst’s campaign manager is under criminal scrutiny, suspected of stealing at least $600,000 — and possibly more than $1 million — from the Republican’s political accounts over the past several years.
Kenneth “Buddy” Barfield, a longtime GOP consultant who most recently managed Dewhurst’s failed run for the U.S. Senate, has been accused of falsifying documents to the Texas Ethics Commission that overstated the cash in Dewhurst’s state campaign committee by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Barfield, who also directed Dewhurst’s re-election campaign for lieutenant governor in 2010, did not return calls to his cellphone Thursday.
The original reports, examined by The Dallas Morning News, allegedly allowed Barfield to conceal huge sums of money taken from the David Dewhurst Committee since 2008 until Dewhurst associates discovered the improprieties this month.
After Dewhurst and his top aides confronted him, Barfield offered to repay the money — but was unable to do so, one campaign official said. Officials then alerted the Travis County district attorney’s office on Dec. 20, asked for an investigation and submitted revised reports to the ethics commission.

(Via Memeorandum.) Meanwhile, Gary Jackson is steamed about reports that aides to Mitt Romney trashed Sarah Palin’s reputation from 2008 onward in order to pave the way for the Romney 2012 campaign — despite the fact that Mitt himself didn’t really want to run again.

It is difficult to maintain any hope of winning with a party run by people whose sole interest in politics is, “What’s in it for me?”

Category: Corruption, Election 2012, Republicans, Scandal

Comments

12 Responses to “Professional GOP Swindlers”

Gary Jackson
December 28th, 2012 @ 8:48 pm

Dewhurst is such a corrupt dirtbag, It only stands to reason his people are as well!
richard mcenroe
December 28th, 2012 @ 9:01 pm

With creds like that,Barfield could find a job with the CA Democrats in no time at all.
Eric Ashley
December 29th, 2012 @ 12:41 am

That last line says an awful lot about why we lose.
Cube
December 29th, 2012 @ 2:23 am

These people have no interest in winning. All they want is a paycheck. You’d think at least a few candidates would be smart enough to tie that paycheck to an actual win. Meanwhile us little people get lied to and we’re tired of it.

Run your campaigns all by yourselves from now on. We’re not going to be played for suckers any more. Good luck.
John Scotus
December 29th, 2012 @ 2:26 am

I’m starting to think that the greatest swindler of all was Mitt Romney himself. I mean, if he wasn’t serious about being president, then what was he doing all those years?
Adjoran
December 29th, 2012 @ 3:32 am

If Gary Jackson has no problem calling out Wallace and Schmidt – who richly deserve it but have no connection to Romney – why isn’t he naming names and citing specific instances about the “Romney insiders” he claims were “badmouthing” Palin?

As to Barfield, anyone who ever believed either party was free of crooks and those just out to steal whatever they can is hopelessly naive. It’s a side of human nature which ideology has never been able to eliminate. The real point of difference is that when Republicans find out our crooks and perverts like Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Larry Craig, or Barfield, we hound them out of office and applaud their prosecution. Democrats instead defend any behavior from their ideological fellows.
Dai Alanye
December 29th, 2012 @ 12:27 pm

I couldn’t make first string in football, but so what! I didn’t really want to go out for the team anyway.

s/Mitt Alanye
narciso
December 29th, 2012 @ 12:48 pm

Jones, who wrote the memo, that was the template for ‘Game Change’ and Madden, who jumped to conclusions re the wardrobe,
AnonymousDrivel
December 29th, 2012 @ 1:51 pm

“It is difficult to maintain any hope of winning with a party run by people whose sole interest in politics is, ‘What’s in it for me?'”

Well, yeah, but that’s the very underbelly of politics… on all sides. It hasn’t been about service since, probably, the late 1700’s. When people spend millions to take a job that officially pays thousands, and they repeatedly fight for that job like their lives depend on it, you can bet that “me” begins and ends every sentence and thought.

That’s “democracy” and ours is unreformable. I wish it wasn’t so, but at the Federal level, it’s become an incestuous criminal enterprise. I have absolutely zero faith in it and our “parties.” They are the enemy and it is not necessarily us. (Curiously, you can’t spell enemy without the “m” and the “e”.)
Bob Belvedere
December 29th, 2012 @ 11:38 pm

All they want is a paycheck. And to still be invited to the ‘right’ cocktail parties.
SDN
December 30th, 2012 @ 4:16 am

There’s a reason the Tea Party in TX refused to have a thing to do with Dewhurst.
Quartermaster
December 30th, 2012 @ 9:21 am

You’ve now realized why the founders gave as a Republic and not a Democracy. We are seeing in real time why the founders did not trust Democracy as it was little more than mob rule. It degenerates to a point where tyranny becomes necessary to save the people from their own stupidity.

By the 8th century, many eastern Christians regarded the Muslim conquest as liberation. The church had subscended into little more than theological wrangling and counter claims of heresy. At least Islam concentrated their minds on what was important. I doubt, however, that we will see any form of tyranny as liberation.