MediaMatters: More Controversial McCain campaign hires - Will the media continue to ignore?

[marmar]

More controversial McCain campaign hires -- will the media continue to ignore?
As Media Matters for America documented, the media largely overlooked Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) hiring of Republican operative Terry Nelson as a senior adviser to his political action committee, despite Nelson's association with several prominent GOP scandals. In addition to Nelson, other members of McCain's political team have also been touched by controversy and have thus far not gained significant media attention.

Patrick Hynes

Political consultant and blogger Patrick Hynes was reportedly hired by Straight Talk America, McCain's political action committee, in May 2006. However, National Review Online blogger Jim Geraghty first reported on July 26 that Hynes' consulting firm, New Media Strategics, did not announce that it had been hired by Straight Talk America until July 24. In the intervening time, according to Geraghty, Hynes wrote several blog entries touting McCain's potential presidential candidacy, attacking former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), a possible McCain rival, and accusing other bloggers of having undisclosed financial ties to presidential candidates, without ever disclosing his own ties to McCain. According to Geraghty, Hynes wrote him an email acknowledging that he should have disclosed his ties to McCain:

You are right, Jim. I ought to have disclosed my relationship with Straight Talk America earlier. The reason I didn't do so is because I was not being paid 'to blog'. I have been a political consultant for fifteen years. That's what I was doing for Straight Talk America: providing political consulting.

Additionally, as Media Matters noted, McCain denounced the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's baseless smears and attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) as "dishonest and dishonorable." However, during the 2004 presidential race, Hynes was a strong proponent of the Swift Boat Veterans' campaign tactics. In an August 13, 2004, article for The American Spectator, Hynes declared Unfit for Command, by Swift Boat Vets John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi, the Spectator's "Book-of-the-Month," writing:

Unfit for Command by Vietnam veteran John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi, an expert on antiwar movements, shares none of those characteristics. It is a book unlike other campaign cycle books in that it injects new information into the public dialogue, avoids redundant circular arguments about issues, and, well, it has a point. That point is summed up with Thomistic bravado by John O'Neill in the book's first chapter: "I resolved that I would refute Kerry's lies."

The chapters in Unfit for Command are testimonies by swift boat captains and crew who knew current Democratic hopeful John Kerry personally. These men offer no insinuations. Their vignettes are not the paranoid ramblings of obese, low-budget filmmakers. The accusations are laid out in black-and-white for Sen. Kerry to read and respond to. That is, if anyone in the gaggle of reporters he travels with daily would bother to ask him about them............(more)

The rest is at: http://mediamatters.org/items/200701080004

[BridgeTheGap]

1. McCain, in his support of the "surge" has cooked his own goose!

The chances of the "surge" working are slim to none. Given that, I have to believe that come Jan. 2008, if the situation in Iraq remains dire or worse, McCain and any others who supported the "surge" will be dead meat at the polls.

[central scrutinizer]

2. Why don't they ask him about the "gooks"?

"I hate gooks" from a 2000 campaign stop.