{"id":15091,"date":"2008-04-02T14:40:10","date_gmt":"2008-04-02T18:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15091.html"},"modified":"2008-04-02T14:40:10","modified_gmt":"2008-04-02T18:40:10","slug":"mccain-invests-his-credibility-capital-in-hiring-lobbyists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccain-invests-his-credibility-capital-in-hiring-lobbyists\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain invests his ‘credibility capital’ in hiring lobbyists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe John McCain found a 2-for-1 sale at the corporate-lobbyist outlet store<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Doug Davenport, a founder of the DCI Group and the head of its lobbying practice, will be one of the McCain campaign’s ten regional campaign managers, Republicans close to the campaign said yesterday.<\/p>\n

Before helping to start DCI, Davenport was the chief lobbyist for a major lottery company. DCI’s federal clients include telecoms, defense contractors, big PhRMA and mortgage lenders. Davenport is close to McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis. <\/p>\n

DCI Group is ground zero for Republican astroturf lobbying — it specializes in setting up “grassroots” coalitions that ostensibly represent critical interest groups or wide swaths of voters. The firm is said to be behind the 2006 spoof of Al Gore’s global warming movie. It helped set up Progress for America, the well-funded 527 that assisted President Bush in the 2004 elections. It is associated with the grassroots lobbying\/direct mail firm Feather Larson Synhorst (FLI), which has close ties to the Bush wing of Republican Party.<\/p>\n

Davenport’s new position is certain to precipitate complaints from rivals that McCain is packing his campaign with the lobbyists whose conduct he has denounced.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s true, but only because McCain is packing his campaign with the lobbyists whose conduct he has denounced.<\/p>\n

At this point, it’s getting embarrassing. McCain’s website tells<\/a> visitors, “Too often the special interest lobbyists with the fattest wallets and best access carry the day.”<\/p>\n

This has, of course, become an increasingly amusing line as the senator’s presidential campaign has unfolded. We now know, for example, that McCain’s campaign staff is dominated<\/a> by corporate lobbyists, and he adds new ones all<\/a> the time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the Davenport hire is of particular interest.
\n
\nFirst, the DCI Group is one of the more offensive conservative outlets in DC. Josh Marshall noted<\/a> that DCI is “the<\/i> Republican outfit when it comes to ‘astroturf’ (i.e., phoney) grassroots campaigns and sundry campaign bamboozlment.”<\/p>\n

Second, with regards to McCain, the senator’s campaign defended his practice of hiring corporate lobbyists for key campaign roles.<\/p>\n

McCain’s advisers have said that McCain’s credentials as a reformer are solid and can overcome any optics problem that comes along with hiring lobbyists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What an interesting concept. McCain is perceived by the media as a reformer who doesn’t kowtow to K Street, so he can abandon his reform principles and hire lobbyists by the dozen without looking too<\/i> bad.<\/p>\n

As Josh put it<\/a>, “[L]ook what it’s actually saying: that McCain’s reputation as someone who won’t truck with lobbyist is so strong that it can overcome the fact that he’s staffing his campaign with top dollar lobbyists, i.e., my reputation trumps the evidence.”<\/p>\n

Quite right. It’s as if McCain believes he has credibility capitol to be invested — and he’s blowing it on purpose because he feels like he has integrity to spare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe John McCain found a 2-for-1 sale at the corporate-lobbyist outlet store. Doug Davenport, a founder of the DCI Group and the head of its lobbying practice, will be one of the McCain campaign’s ten regional campaign managers, Republicans close to the campaign said yesterday. Before helping to start DCI, Davenport was the chief lobbyist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}