{"id":16409,"date":"2008-07-30T09:05:22","date_gmt":"2008-07-30T13:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16375.html"},"modified":"2008-07-30T09:05:22","modified_gmt":"2008-07-30T13:05:22","slug":"did-the-mccain-campaign-give-up-on-its-lobbyist-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/did-the-mccain-campaign-give-up-on-its-lobbyist-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Did the McCain campaign give up on its lobbyist ban?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There were a couple of weeks in May that were rather embarrassing for the McCain campaign. McCain had developed a reputation as a politician who had little use for high-priced DC lobbyists, but it quickly became obvious that his entire campaign operation was being run by … high-priced DC lobbyists. In one eight-day stretch, McCain had to fire five lobbyists<\/a> from key campaign roles because of their lobbying clients, and the campaign felt compelled to issue new guidelines prohibiting lobbyists from joining McCain’s paid staff.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, this<\/a> was a curious exchange on CBS News last night.<\/p>\n

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For those who can’t watch clips online, Katie Couric asked Rick Davis, ostensibly McCain’s campaign manager, how many lobbyists work at campaign headquarters. “We don’t make it a litmus test for employment at the McCain campaign,” Davis said. “It goes without saying that some people who are involved in the lobbying profession do it because they are interested in that side of the equation. They’re interested in government, they’re interested in Congress, they’re interested in public service.<\/p>\n

When Couric followed up by asking if the McCain campaign considers lobbyists “public servants,” Davis responded, “Well, I didn’t say that. How do you distinguish someone who lobbies, you know, on behalf of cancer from someone who lobbies on behalf of an oil interest. I wouldn’t call them the same thing but they’re still lobbyists.”<\/p>\n

Josh Marshall asked<\/a>, “[H]ow is this not a reversal of [the McCain campaign’s] rule?”<\/p>\n

As a matter of fact, it is<\/i> a reversal.
\n
\nJust three months ago, the McCain campaign, reeling after a series of lobbyist-related controversies, took action. Rick Davis, a former lobbyist, wrote a memo outlining a new campaign policy: “No person working for the Campaign may be a registered lobbyist or foreign agent, or receive compensation for any such activity.”<\/p>\n

In fact, the entire policy is online<\/a>, and it’s language is unambiguous — if you’re a lobbyist, you can’t work for the campaign. Davis surely knows this; he wrote and distributed the policy.<\/p>\n

And yet, there was Davis last night, effectively telling a national television audience that the policy he wrote is no longer in effect. Hmm.<\/p>\n

Perhaps some enterprising journalist might want to follow up on this. I’ll make it easy for the media, by writing the questions for them:<\/p>\n

* Why would the McCain campaign prohibit lobbyists from joining the campaign staff in May, but drop the ban in July?<\/p>\n

* What promoted the McCain campaign to reverse the policy? And why did the campaign keep the change under wraps?<\/p>\n

* How many lobbyists do<\/i> work for McCain right now? (In May, the number was 134<\/a>. Has the number gone up or down since then?)<\/p>\n

And yes, in case you’re wondering, I’m going to add this to The List<\/a>. We’re up to 72.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There were a couple of weeks in May that were rather embarrassing for the McCain campaign. McCain had developed a reputation as a politician who had little use for high-priced DC lobbyists, but it quickly became obvious that his entire campaign operation was being run by … high-priced DC lobbyists. In one eight-day stretch, McCain […]<\/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-16409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16409","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=16409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}