As you know, we’ve been keeping tabs on the Associated Press’s atrocious campaign coverage this year. And now The Politico’s Michael Calderone has a potential answer to the question of why the premier wire service’s coverage this year sucks so bad: Ron Fournier, the new head of the AP’s Washington Bureau.
Did the NYT miss the boat on why Connecticut Dems are put out with Joe Lieberman?
The latest McCain strategy was unveiled on a conference call with reporters this morning, best summarized by McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann: “Sen. Obama seems to think losing a war will help him win an election.”
As you can see, the McCain campaign is moving ahead with a new stab-in-the-back style attack on Obama over Iraq. But as Team McCain is raising the volume on these slash-and-burn style attacks, it’s time for some coverage of the guy who’s McCain’s brain on Iraq. Remember, McCain’s pitch on Iraq is that he was a critic of Bush, not a supporter, on the poor decisions and lies that got us into the current mess. In the McCain paradigm, he starts fresh with the ‘surge’. That’s where he takes ownership, as it were, of Iraq.
But look who’s advising him on Iraq, who’s crafting Iraq policy. That would be Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s top foreign policy advisor. And he’s the guy who today accused Barack Obama of wanting to lead America to defeat in Iraq for political gain.
Scheunemann was a core participant in the lobbying, plotting and organized campaigns of deception that led America to war in Iraq. He was a close collaborator with Ahmad Chalabi through the 1990s. He helped draft the Iraq Liberation Act, which created the new funding stream for Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. At the start of the Bush administration he signed on as Don Rumsfeld’s ‘consultant’ on Iraq at the Pentagon. And then when the administration started cranking up the machinery for the propaganda campaign in favor of war he went back on the outside to form and lead the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, to lead the press and lobbying campaign to make sure the war got started on schedule.
Remember, US intelligence later found evidence that Chalabi, in addition to foisting a bunch of bogus intelligence and lying informers on the US and pocketing a lot of US taxpayer dollars, had provided highly classified US intelligence to Iran. Scheunemann worked closely with Chalabi for years in his efforts to get the US into war with Iraq. He was also a go-between between Chalabi and McCain. Now that he’s taking such a high-profile role on the Iraq issue in the 2008, Scheunemann’s history with Chalabi and the use of bogus intelligence to get the nation into war is unquestionably highly newsworthy.
Courtesy of TPM Reader PD, McCain Iraq spokesman Randy Scheunemann appearing as Ahmad Chalabi’s defender on the PBS Newshour back in May 2003.
You may have seen the article over the weekend alleging that a high-flying lobbyist was hawking White House meetings with administration bigwigs in exchange for donations to the Bush library. White House press secretary Dana Perino got a chance to deny the allegations and served up this pretty weak denial …
Late Update: President Bush has longstanding ties with the lobbyist-cum-consultant caught on video, as Andrew Tilghman reports.
Earlier today we noted the possible role of AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier is turning the AP’s campaign coverage into complete crap. Now from the just released Tillman Report, it seems Fournier was also one of the reporters exchanging emails the day of Tillman’s death with Karl Rove of all people — and according to the report at least, offering advice on how to handle the story. “Keep up the fight,” Fournier tells Rove.
Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam join us at TPMCafe’s Book Club to discuss their new book: Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream. Douthat starts things off with a post tackling two persistent narratives that dominate discussion of American politics — one favored by liberals, the other by conservatives — but which the authors argue are fundamentally flawed. Buckle your seat belts.
Rasmussen has Franken pulling ahead of Coleman in Minnesota. Just by a tad, mind you — 44% – 42%. But I can’t think of the last poll that didn’t have Coleman beating Al.