Let's turn our attention now to the Bush-McCain connection. We have some people that are constantly reminding us about how McCain is so different from Bush. Let's see how we can tie Bush and McCain together, in some very concrete ways - shall we ?
To start, we have that comment from Bush himself that I've posted before when McCain showed up for the White House to be endorsed by Bush.
All I can say is that on the fundamentals and the principles of our Republican Party and most of the specifics of our shared conservative philosophy, President Bush and I are in agreement.
- John McCain
The President behind the scenes has told people for months that he thought McCain would be the nominee. Even during some of those dark periods he still thought he could win. And also that McCain would be the best to carry forth his agenda.
Time Magazine' s Mark Halperin
FOX TV
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/08/bush-mccain-will-best-carry-out-my-agenda/
So let's take a look at some of the people associated with McCain's campaign, and see where they fit in to all this.
As some of you might be aware, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) group is a neo-con institution, and many of it's members were key Bush players. That letter to Clinton from the PNAC in 1998 is the genesis point of the war in Iraq.
So if we could find PNAC members associating with McCain, that might be a warning sign that McCain and Bush might share a lot more than one might think.
Oh, and yes.....we CAN find them :
Randy Scheunemann - McCain's foreign policy adviser, neo con, PNAC member, and ex- President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
Robert Kagan - McCain's Middle East adviser, neo- con, co-founder PNAC, co-signer of that 1998 letter to Clinton.
James Woolsey - McCain's Middle East adviser, neo-con PNAC founding member and also a co-signer of that 1998 letter. Government consultant and adviser during the Bush administration.
Daniel McKivergan -John McCain for President: Campaign Staffer, neo-con , former deputy-director PNAC
Bill Kristal - Informal Foreign Policy Adviser -neo-con , Founder PNAC.
Gary Schmitt - Foreign Policy Adviser - neo-con, AEI Fellow and PNAC signatory. Co-author with Abram Shulsky (overseer of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans) of a book on the political though of Leo Strauss as applied to intelligence gathering.
John Vincent Weber - former Republican congressman from Minnesota who was an advisor to McCain's presidential campaign in 2000. PNAC member. George Bush campaign adviser. connected to Empower America.
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI)?
This is a strong right wing , neo-con think tank.
AEI has emerged as one of the leading architects of the second Bush administration's public policy. More than twenty AEI alumni and current visiting scholars and fellows have served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government's many panels and commissions.
So does McCain have any AEI members on his staff ?
The abovementioned Gary Schmitt, an AEI Fellow, is one.
So are Dr. Charles Calomiris (McCain Finance Economic Adviser), and Dr. Kevin Hasset (McCain economic policy coordinator).
( They shared offices next to each other at AEI)
Let's see who else we can find, shall we ?
Dr. Doug Holtz Eakin - Senior Policy Advisor for John McCain
He was the director of the Congressional Budget Office (2003–05). He also served for 18 months as chief economist in the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush (2001–02) and for two years as senior staff economist in President George H. W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers (1989–90).
Thomas Loeffler - ( just quit over Saudi Arabia connection)
McCain's National finance co-chair , He was an advisor to presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush. According to The Loeffler Group Web site, Loeffler served as Texas Co-Chairman, Bush for President (1988); National Advisor to the 1992 Bush-Quayle Campaign; Co-Chairman, President's Dinner (1992, 2001, 2004 and 2005); and Texas delegate to the Republican National Conventions (1984, 1988 and 1992). He was the Texas Finance Co-Chairman, George W. Bush for Governor (1994); National Finance Chairman,National Finance Co-Chairman, George W. Bush for President (1999-2000); and South Texas Co-Chairman, Bush-Cheney ‘04, Inc. (2004).
In February 2005, he was asked by the Board of Regents to serve as Co-Chairman of a special ad hoc advisory committee to spearhead work on a proposal for the Presidential Library of President George W. Bush.
Sixty former Bush rangers or pioneers raised money for McCain.
Lisa Graham Keegan - McCain education adviser. Was considered for position of Secretary of Education under George Bush.
From 2001 to 2004, Ms. Keegan consulted with President George Bush, his domestic policy staff and Secretary Rod Paige on matters of education policy, as well as with the education leadership of 38 states. Significant policies and programs she helped implement during this time include No Child Left Behind Act, Following the Leaders School Implementation Program, American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, Washington DC School Choice Program. In 2003 she was a member of Education Secretary Rod Page's Title IX Commission.
Keegan’s original three year contract was extended to September 2004, after which she became an independent consultant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Graham_Keegan
Rich Bond served as RNC Chairman from 1992-1993. He previously served as Deputy Chief of Staff in the White House. National political director in Bush’s successful 1988 presidential campaign, Deputy Chief of Staff to Vice President Bush.
Jeb Bush - McCain education adviser.
Terry Neilson - former McCain Sr. Adviser (quit) - political director of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign.
In early 2006, Nelson was hired as a "senior adviser" to Senator John McCain; in December 2006 McCain's presidential exploratory committee said that Nelson was McCain's pick to be his national campaign manager, should McCain choose to turn his exploring into a full-blown run for the White House.
On July 10, 2007, Nelson resigned as national campaign manager for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. The sudden departure of both Nelson and longtime McCain adviser John Weaver came after months of increasing campaign problems. McCain, after first insisting that neither man had been fired, called their departure "a consensus decision."
Donald Bren - McCain's national finance co-chairman - Member George W. Bush for President Organization
2007 edition of "The 400 Richest Americans", ranked Bren as the wealthiest real estate owner in the US with an estimated net worth of $13 billion.
Eugene W. Hickok - McCain Education adviser
President George W. Bush nominated Hickok as his Under Secretary of Education on March 30, 2001 and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on July 10, 2001. Hickok served as both the Under Secretary of Education and Acting Deputy Secretary between July 2003 and November 3, 2003 when the President nominated him to become Deputy Secretary. The deputy secretary is the chief policy advisor to the Secretary. In this position, Hickok oversaw and managed the development of policies, recommendations and initiatives that help define a broad, coherent vision for achieving the President's education priorities, including the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
William D. Hansen - McCain Education adviser
He was formally nominated as deputy secretary by President George W. Bush on April 23, 2001, and unanimously confirmed by the Senate a month later on May 22. The president announced his intention to nominate Hansen, 42, who served as the Education Department transition team director for the Bush-Cheney Transition, on March 8.
Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain who was once a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.
William M. Evers - McCain education adviser
He was appointed to his federal post by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2007. Evers specializes in research on education policy especially as it pertains to curriculum, teaching, testing, accountability, and school finance from kindergarten through high school. From July to December 2003, he served in Iraq as senior adviser for education to Administrator L. Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Evers was an education policy adviser and a leader of education-community supporters during President George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, and he served as a member of the education advisory committee for the transition. From 2001 to 2007, Evers served as an appointee of President Bush on the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars, which selects the nation's top high school seniors based on their achievement in academics and the arts.
Phil Gramm - McCain 's economic adviser, and probable Secretary of the Treasury, if elected.
Family: Wife: Dr. Wendy Lee Gramm, former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Presidents Reagan and Bush
Gramm was partly caught up in the Enron scandal when it emerged that his wife Wendy had in part written an exemption for Enron from federal oversight while she was serving on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. She then accepted a directorship at Enron (for 1.85 million dollars). Phil Gramm was personally involved further when it came to light that he had helped to turn the exemption into law as well as push through the deregulation of energy markets that led in part to the Enron scandal. During this period Enron was a major contributor (actually the largest) to his campaigns.
Meanwhile Enron had become Phil Gramm's largest corporate contributor—and according to Public Citizen, the largest across-the board donor in its industry. Between 1989 and 2001, the company tossed Gramm just under $100,000.
In 1998, Wendy Gramm cashed in her Enron stock for $276,912. There's nothing unusual about a Washington regulator quitting the government and going to work for a private company she was regulating. And people often get rich in the process. Wendy Gramm, whose office didn't return Voice calls, has told reporters she sold the stock expressly to avoid any hint of a conflict of interest.
A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS's new investment banking arm.
Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.
During those years, the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages.
Paul Krugman, this week wrote " I'd argue that aside from Alan Greenspan, nobody did as much as Mr. Gramm to make this crisis possible."
Tim Griffin
Indicating what lies ahead is the McCain campaign's plan to bring in Tim Griffin, a protege of Karl Rove, who is a leading practitioner of opposition research -- the digging up of derogatory information about political opponents. Although final arrangements have not been pinned down, Griffin would work at the Republican National Committee, as he did during Bush's 2004 reelection campaign.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2008/05/21/AR2008052102425.html
Steve Schmidt, Bush’s attack dog in the 2004 election
Ken Mehlman, who ran Bush’s 2004 campaign - now serving as an unpaid, outside adviser
Karl Rove is now informally advising the campaign. Rove refused to detail his conversation with McCain.
Dan Bartlett, former top aide in the Bush White House is onside with McCain.
Sara Taylor - Bush political adviser, ditto.
Karl Rove - Informal McCain adviser, and donor.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/20/why-wont-fox-reveal-analy_n_102591.html
Nicolle Wallace, formerly communications director for Mr. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.
Richard L. Armitage - adviser to presidential candidate John McCain
In 1998, Armitage signed "The Project for the New American Century" letter (PNAC Letter) to President Bill Clinton. The letter urged Clinton to target the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power in Iraq due to erosion of the Gulf War Coalition's containment policy and the resulting possibility that Iraq might develop weapons of mass destruction. The letter's intended purpose of removing Hussein was to protect Israel and other U.S. allies in the region, including oil-producing Arab countries.
During the 2000 Presidential election campaign, he served as a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush as part of a group led by Condoleezza Rice that called itself The Vulcans
The United States Senate confirmed him as Deputy Secretary of State on March 23, 2001; he was sworn three days later. A close associate of Secretary of State Colin Powell, Armitage was regarded, along with Powell, as a moderate within the presidential administration of George W. Bush.
There was some media speculation that President Bush would appoint him to a key security position such as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Director of National Intelligence or Defense Secretary. As of the start of July 2007, Armitage had not re-entered public service. On May 10, 2006, he was elected to the board of directors of the ConocoPhillips oil company.
On August 30, 2006, CNN reported that Armitage had been confirmed "by sources" as leaking Ms. Wilson's CIA role in a "casual conversation" with Robert Novak.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage
(Further topping off Armitage's investment interests in the war: He sits on the board of directors of ConocoPhillips, which is aiming to become a major player in Iraq's energy industry through a joint venture with Russia's Lukoil.)
http://www.salon.com/news/excerpt/2008/05/29/spies_for_hire/index.html
Ties to Bush, and oil, and Iraq.
Wayne Berman National Finance Co-Chairman
- ex-Bush Administration Commerce Department assistant secretary
Name: Wayne L. Berman
Occupation: Lobbyist & Owner, Berman Enterprises, Inc.
Industry: Lawyers & Lobbyists
Home: Washington, DC
Berman has lobbied for two other firms that won major investment contracts from Silvester. These firms are PaineWebber and the Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group was started by top officials in the Bush seniors administration.
http://www.tpj.org/pioneers/wayne_berman.html
Frank Donatelli McCain Pick as Deputy RNC Chair
He also assisted Baker in the 2000 Florida recount on behalf of the Bush-Cheney team. Frank was a senior advisor to Bob Dole in 1996 and previously worked in the presidential campaigns of George Bush and Ronald Reagan.
http://www.mwcllc.com/people/individuals/donatelli_f.asp
Nancy Pfotenhauer - Adviser
Bush appointed Pfotenhauer to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women
Pfotenhauer served in Bush I's administration in various capacities
http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php
?id=654&name=Nancy-Pfotenhauer
Richard Hohlt - Fundraiser
Nomination of Richard F. Hohlt To Be a Member of the Board of Directors of the Student Loan Marketing Association
January 5th, 1990 - By President Bush Sr.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=18012
Peter Madigan - Fundraiser
Peter Madigan
From SourceWatch
Peter Madigan is a powerful lobbyist with close ties to the Republican Party who has represented clients such as McDonnell Douglas Corp., Ford Motor Co. and the Distilled Spirits Council.
Madison worked in the presidential administration of George Herbert Walker Bush.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peter_Madigan
Jack Oliver - Fundraiser
LIEUTENANT OF LUCRE: Bush's deputy finance chairman, Jack Oliver, at his Washington office
Bush has Oliver to thank for much of that success but rarely praises him in public. And that's how Oliver likes it. He's the financial wizard behind the curtain. It's a role Oliver played for Bush in 2000 and one he is reprising this year, having just moved from the Republican Party to be deputy finance chairman for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030707-461834,00.html
McCain can be directly tied to the PNAC , through the NCP.
New Citizenship Project (also New Citizenship Project, Inc.) is a non-profit organization funded by large right-wing foundations. Founded in 1994, NCP initiated the Project for the New American Century, one of the key behind-the-scenes architects of the Bush administration's foreign policy. According to his senate biography, John McCain served as a president of NCP, "an organization created to promote greater civic participation in our national life."
McCain also served on the Council.
The John M. Olin Foundation, Inc. listed grants in 1997 show the subtitle for The New Citizenship Project as the "Project for the Next American Century." It clearly appears that the origninal 1994 PNAC concept has become the current Project for the New American Century.
"...the New Citizenship Project, an affiliate of the Project for the Republican Future, a conservative G.O.P. think tank founded by William Kristol."
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=New_Citizenship_Project
More details on McCain's lobbyists :
The McCain-Lobbyist Connection
http://mediamattersaction.org/freeride/lobbyists/
More to follow , as research allows.
So the next time anyone tells you that a McCain presidency isn't really Bush III, you can ask them to explain why all these chickens are coming home to roost in support of Mccain.
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