Reply #124: Village Voice: How Roger Stone Destroyed the Reform Party

[JPZenger]

This is a 2004 story about how Roger Stone spread malicious stories about Pat Buchanan, helped break up the Reform Party, and open the door to its nomination of Ralph Nader.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0420/barrett.php

Excerpt:

"Pat Buchanan ... seized control of the most successful third party in half a century, the Reform Party, whose founder, Ross Perot, cost Bush I the presidency in 1992. Once Buchanan became the party's presidential nominee, he mysteriously disappeared, getting 2.4 million votes less than Ralph Nader, 80,000 less in Florida alone. The Buchanan saga remains important not only because it reveals the seamy underside of Bush II's ascent to power, but because it shows how the GOP virtually eliminated a national centrist party that could've altered the 2004 race.

Alive now in only seven states, the party's remnants just offered their ballot line to Nader, which could also wind up benefiting Bush. The saga begins with a baby, allegedly born more than four decades ago. Incredibly, just as Bush backers in 2000 used an illegitimate-child scandal in South Carolina to smear John McCain, longtime Republican dirty-tricks operative Roger Stone was simultaneously using just such a scandal to undermine Buchanan."