Republican Fixer tells all - or almost all?

Allen Raymond, convicted former dirty tricks expert for a number of Republican campaigns, doesn't sound like such a sleezeball on this Jon Stewart Daily Show interview.

On the other hand, he still sounded like a sleezeball when I reviewed his book.

"His first campaign was a local election, and direct mail played a big part in it. He specialized in saying misleading things about his candidate’s opponent, some of which were nasty and personal. If he actually lied he doesn’t tell us about it – that might be illegal. He says his candidate complained to him about how the direct mail people were out of control, and he wanted the dirtier tricks stopped because some of the people who knew the truth and despised him (the candidate) for the misleading tricks were neighbors. Raymond says he encouraged this while pretending to try and stop it, because that was what was needed to get the candidate elected – and he liked the feeling of being an aggressive win-at-all-costs mercenary. I’m not sure if Steve Corodemus (he names names) was really as innocent as Raymond pretends or if he’s one of the few people Raymond still feels loyalty to – but I wouldn’t vote for him, a really capable and trustworthy assemblyman would have found out and put a stop to this garbage."

Joseph Palermo of the Huffington post has a great review, though he doesn't talk about what what our former fixex might still be hiding:

Raymond's experience inside the bowels of the RNC and his expertise in smear tactics, racist push polls and robo-calls, voter suppression, and other Republican mainstays give him a useful perspective. Maybe Democratic candidates in the future can better counter the inevitable Republican smears and attacks with a better understanding of how they work. But I wouldn't count on it.