Cold War Mentality + Lobbyists + Hypocrisy = Foreign Policy: McCain is our GOP Hypocrite Again

August 15, 2008

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

Welcome back to the Buzzflash GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

John McCain has taken great pains to establish himself as a war hero with wide and deep foreign policy experience. But when that expertise was tried by an international crisis in Georgia this week, the Senator's true colors were on display.

First, some background. McCain was our nominee last week for his multiple hypocrisies when it came to campaign ads. The time he won the award before last week, it was for backtracking on campaign finance reform. The time before that, it was for hypocritical ties to lobbyists.  We've got a lot to cover this week, so let's start there.

Though McCain's new policy on lobbyists forced Randy Scheunemann to take a leave of absence from his own lobbying firm, Orion, in May of this year, The Washington Post reported that the overlap between his work for Georgia and his work for McCain is significant:

"Between Jan. 1, 2007, and May 15, 2008, the campaign paid Scheunemann nearly $70,000 to provide foreign policy advice. During the same period, the government of Georgia paid his firm $290,000 in lobbying fees."

Ethics advisers from all over the map are questioning Scheunemann's ability to offer McCain untainted advice about the country who has been signing checks to him for years.

The lobbyist-as-campaign-adviser has always been a troublesome trope, but this brings conflict of interest to a whole new level: namely, conflict. Perhaps even more insidious, however, is Robert Scheer's identification of Scheunemann as the man "who engineered the war in Iraq when he was a director of the Project for a New American Century."  Scheer goes on to note:

"It was Scheunemann who, after working on the McCain 2000 presidential campaign, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There are telltale signs that he played a similar role in the recent Georgia flare-up."

Sure, it sounds like a movie plot. But we don't put Scheer's idea of an October surprise in August past Sen. "I Know More About War Than You" McCain.  

It seems McCain is dragging the media along with him on this path of tortured logic. Writers for The Wall Street Journal, ABC and Time Magazine all agree that this eruption of violence is a boon for McCain's campaign, figuring that he is somehow still the foreign policy expert. In fact, Michael Kranish of The Boston Globe seems to say that McCain's lobbyist connection with Georgia is a plus! 

Yet with the MSM at his back and an "expert" lobbyist at his front, McCain still managed to demonstrate both his ignorance about the region and the haphazardness of his campaign message. His speech about the country and the conflict has chunks that appear to be lifted directly from the Wikipedia page about Georgia.

Regardless of whether you agree that his lobbying connections are suspect, or whether you worry McCain's hot temper and desire to win the election might drive us into a new war, any elementary school student will tell you that plagiarism is not allowed.

As a hypocritical cherry on top of an already large sundae, McCain said on CNN that the United States' international right to aggression does not apply to Russia:

"In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations. And we will decide in subsequent days... who was right and who was wrong."

And, of course, when McCain says "we," he means "me." As if that statement weren't presumptuous enough, McCain is sending surrogates to the region so as to trump the sitting president, Condi Rice, and Sen. Barack Obama all at once. 

McCain is seeing this conflict with a Cold War lens, threatening to do all kinds of mean, nasty things to Russia that Europe will not support. If there's any doubt as to whether McCain has made the switch to the 21st century, remember we are talking about the candidate who repeatedly said that Czechoslovakia still exists.

We're not sure whether McCain is really the candidate who puts his country first. It's sure starting to look like he puts his campaign first, though.  Which is why John McCain is this week's BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

Remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

Catch up with you soon. 

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