Quoted In An ABC News Article On McCain

by John Hawkins | March 21, 2007 5:35 am

Jennifer Rubin over at ABC News[1] contacted me to get some quotes for an article about John McCain. Here are the scathing quotes that made it into the article,

“Many media observers like Larry Sabato perceive, “Campaign finance is at the heart of much of the blogger antagonism, though some remember McCain’s attacks on Christian conservatives in 2000. The other items just underline the suspicion that conservatives have about what McCain would do once in the Oval Office— that he would frequently disappoint them.”

John Hawkins of Rightwingnews.com says, “It’s much broader and deeper than McCain-Feingold alone. It’s his comments about social conservatives back in 2000, the rumors about him switching parties, the gang-of-14 compromise, his pro-illegal immigration stand, his fight to coddle al-Qaeda at Gitmo, and probably a half dozen other things.”

Among the bluntest is Dean Barnett of Soxblog.com and Hughhewitt.com who says, “He has antagonized the right consistently for six years. The damage cannot be repaired.”

…The bloggers offer varied advice for McCain’s new media operation, ranging from a dismissive jab that “McCain’s best bet is to try not to further alienate people in the new media and work around them” from John Hawkins to more constructive suggestions that “[m]aking the candidate available goes a long, long way” (Dean Barnett) and that it is still a good idea “to pick up the phone — or have a happy hour& that goes a lot further than getting random emails. (Matt Lewis).”

I did let Rubin know that I consult for the Duncan Hunter campaign[2] through TCV Media[3], but that wasn’t included for some reason.