Former Outside NRA Lobbyist Gives A Boost To McCain
When he went to woo the National Rifle Association convention in Louisville, Ky., on Friday, it did not hurt that presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, was accompanied by a former outside NRA lobbyist turned campaign adviser, Randy Scheunemann.
Officially the top foreign policy and national security adviser to McCain’s campaign, Scheunemann told National Journal in March he has weighed in with advice on Second Amendment and firearms issues. He said he had stopped lobbying for all his clients early this year, and his lobbying registration forms show that the NRA work ended at the end of 2007.
But during that year while he was helping the campaign, Scheunemann & Associates, one of two boutique firms he runs, received $40,000 in fees from the NRA. The NRA, one of his oldest clients, paid him the same amount for several prior years. Scheunemann, who started working for the campaign as a volunteer in early 2007, did not return four calls seeking comment for this story.
According to one NRA lobbyist who was at the convention, Scheunemann arrived and departed with McCain. Scheunemann spent most of his time at the event backstage -- where McCain had a brief meeting with NRA leaders, according to a lobbyist.
In 2001, the NRA labeled McCain “one of the premier flag carriers for the enemies of the Second Amendment.” But this year the group has been much friendlier, in part because of its fears about what Democratic Sens. Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton would do on gun issues if they won the presidency.
In his remarks to the NRA, McCain drove the point home by saying that if either Democrat won the election, “the rights of law-abiding gun owners would be at risk.”
Before he became a lobbyist about eight years ago, Scheunemann spent more than a decade on Capitol Hill serving as a top foreign policy aide to, among others, former Senate Majority Leaders Bob Dole and Trent Lott. Scheunemann’s other lobbying firm, Orion Strategies, has worked for several foreign governments, including Georgia, Latvia, Macedonia and Romania, who have joined or are seeking to join NATO.
During the last week since the McCain campaign established conflict-of-interest rules to minimize criticism over the large number of well-known lobbyists working for the senator, Scheunemann has drawn scrutiny mostly over his foreign work. USA Today reported Wednesday that Scheunemann lobbied a McCain staffer on matters relating to the Georgian government in 2007 while he was working for the campaign.
(National Journal writer PETER STONE)
So let me get this right. In order for armed, law abiding citizens to even listen to John McCain speak at the NRA conference, they had to lock their arms in the car. Yet John McCain is a "friend of the Second Amendment?"
A room full of armed citizens is the safest place in the world for a Presidential candidate. All of those people at the NRA conference would have risked their lives to protect John McCain. He sounds like another elitist politician who talks the talk but when it comes down to things, he is just another gun grabber.
People like "Patriot" are the ones this native Southerner worries about. "Ever'body oughta be armed! We'll all pro-tect the prezzidenchul candy-date!"
I'm sure this brilliant person believes that if everybody in Dallas was armed in 1963, JFK wouldn't have been shot. The only thing that might happen in a room full of armed people is lots more people would be killed in the crossfire after the candidate was shot by someone in the crowd.
What a frickin' loon. I try to be nice to people, but after listening to these kinds of folks all my life, I just have to call them out as the illogical dopes they are.
Hey JM
Me thinks Patriot may have been using a literary technique known as sarcasm. But whadda I know I just an illogical dope.
Hey JM
Me thinks Patriot may have been using a literary technique known as sarcasm. But whadda I know I just an illogical dope.
I'm as solid a Republican as they come but one of the issues that scares me about McCain is his surrounding himself with a$$holes like Randy Scheunemann. I've worked directly with Randy and I've never met a more pompous jerk in my life. And his arrogant, blind neocon mid-east work has endangered our country. And NOW those same folks have McCain's ear. The one good thing about McCain is that he has been a free thinker, however if he continues to employ stubborn jerks like Randy instead of more seasoned, reasoned advisors we are all doomed...