Times' First Tip Came "More Than A Year Ago"

Check this out:

As far as the timing, don’t attach too much significance to the Drudge posting. We heard a second-hand report from a lobbyist about Senator McCain and Vicki Iseman more than a year ago. Early last year we began making careful, quiet inquiries into the matter. Last fall, we learned more about some of the conversations around the campaign concerning Ms. Iseman, and we kept reporting.

According to the Times' David Kirkpatrick, somebody -- Rutenberg? -- first picked up on rumors about Sen. John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman "more than a year ago." And the first reporting on the article began "early last year."

Why is that significant? Because many -- including the Times's own David Brooks and Ms. Iseman's lobbying firm -- seem to blame McCain aide John Weaver for instigating the story.

But more than a year ago, Mr. Weaver was firmly ensconced as McCain's chief strategist. It beggers belief to think that he would someone be involved in tipping off a Times reporter.

Note also that Kirkpatrick says the first tip -- from a "second hand" report -- came from a lobbyist. Most likely, this lobbyist was not friendly to Mr. McCain.

I'm as curious as the next reporter about the identity of the original and confirming sources. Kirkpatrick's words lend some credence to my theory that at least one of them was a prominent lobbyist who was part of the team in 2000 and had some reason to disfavor McCain.

Comments

McCain is guilty of a real scandal. Not messing with the lobbyist, but breaking FEC laws that he helped to create. It doesn’t look good for him to be flying around with the owner of Fox..no wonder you guys favor him.
All Fox news does is try to slam him for his wife visiting Vegas, and now this b.s. story. Pullitzer prize winning journalism.
I want CNN to honor the Republican debate that was scheduled for 2/28. I think we deserve to make choices of our own. http://www.mustdebate.com is where u can sign the petition, if you want them to debate.

Posted by cons3rvative | February 22, 2008 9:32 PM

tip of the Iseberg. I think the lobbyist doinking is common, but the influence, and the breaking of FEC laws McCain helped create is not. I'm glad the Times published this. I suspect they have alot more and are giving him enough rope to hang his nomination. bye McCain!

Posted by cons3rvative | February 22, 2008 9:35 PM

Sigh. Are people still talking about this universally discredited story? The predictable response is tired too - bring up the Keating Five scandal of which McCain was found to have done no wrong doing in.

Look, everyone knows this story came from the Romney camp. It was oppo drudged up from the many rumours spread in 2000 about McCain. McCain was a huge target before his sudden crash in the summer.

Now, I want more answers on Obama and Rezko. Why did Obama give a contributer's son an internship at Rezko's request? Why are anti-corruption groups in Chicago blasting Obama for only now releasing details about his meeting with Rezko to buy a home even after he had been charged with corruption? Why did Rezko try to get the real estate agent who sold Obama his home a state position. I'm expecting a lot of damaging details to come out around the time the trial starts on March 3rd.

Then of course there's the Centre for Responsive politics hitting Obama on essentially buying super delegates.

Or his broken pledge to opt into the public financing system for the general.

I think if we want real reform in Washington then Obama is not the guy to go with.

Posted by Jesse | February 22, 2008 9:59 PM

I'm a Evangelical Repub. I am not very enthusiastic about McCain. The article is crap. If the NYT have something, they should just spit it out. As it is, the Old Grey Lady is just a pathetic whore for the Dem's.
Anyone what to buy NYT stock? They did it to themselves. At this point, it doesn't even matter if they are right cuz their reign is over.
Pinch can take the blame but he probably won't and all the MSM will be tainted with them. That's what they have done.
Been along time coming and they will be a long time gone.

Posted by linda | February 22, 2008 10:03 PM

"After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee determined in 1991 that Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald Riegle had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in its investigation of Lincoln Savings, while John Glenn and John McCain had been only minimally involved. The Committee recommended censure for Cranston and criticized the other four for "questionable conduct.""

One would agree that he was not convicted. But he was hardly exonerated.

But it is true that nobody would care about the Keating 5 if he hadn't taken up lying again. It makes you wonder what else he has been up to....it is hardly been proven that his hands are clean in recent times. His lobbyist staffed campaign just insists that no one has the right to ask the question.

After all he is --(gasp) --John McCain.

Posted by Tim Connor | February 22, 2008 10:21 PM

I'm as curious as the next reporter about the identity of the original and confirming sources. Kirkpatrick's words lend some credence to my theory that at least one of them was a prominent lobbyist who was part of the team in 2000 and had some reason to disfavor McCain.

I'm confused; I thought your theory as related yesterday hinged on (and really only made sense in the context of) a rival campaign leaking this info around the time when you claimed the campaign started to heat up in November. Of course it did no such thing, but this timing was good enough for you yesterday -- how do you square that with these revelations today?

Posted by Jeff Larson | February 23, 2008 12:25 AM

Jeff, I doubt you've followed the Republicans as much as the Dems race. McCain WAS back on the rise in november. In fact as early as september he started to recover with the brilliant "No Surrender" tour and his excellent "I was tied up at the time" debate performance. Polls always tend to lag and everyone knew Romney's NH numbers were inflated with early advertising. It was McCain's fundementals that were strong and gaining strength every day. The race definetly was heating up in november, especially with the rise of Huckabee in Iowa.

Everyone also knows that Matt Drudge was romantically involved with a staffer in the Romney camp, if the rumours are to be believed.

Most of us McCain supporters knew about the story way back when Drudge leaked it and most of us blamed the Romney camp.

All of this speculation that it was Weaver getting back at the McCain camp is just BS. My hunch would be to check out the ad guys that left during the turn over in the summer and moved to Romney's camp. They were the ones who made an excellent attack video on Romney's flip flops back in the spring. When they went to the dark side they encouraged Romney to go even more negative and more personal than he ended up doing.

Posted by Jesse | February 23, 2008 1:45 AM

Huh? You 're more credible than Drudge? Live in your own fool's paradise.

Posted by Anita | February 23, 2008 7:33 AM

Marc,

You might want to reread the Brooks column, especially the part where he says: "Moreover, Weaver had been trying to get back into the fold. There is no way he would be an anonymous source against McCain."

I don't think he "seem[s] to blame" Weaver.

Posted by Bill | February 23, 2008 11:18 AM

I would bet, if I had to, that McCain's actions - whatever they were - probably didn't justify the tone of the article. If they did, then I am sure we'll hear more from the Times.

The bigger issue here is this battle that the Times and certain other once-credible papers have gotten into with Fox News, et. al. When they choose to counter Fox's blatant bigot-bating with partisan attacks of their own, their voices become lost among all those other partisan hacks who don't think before speaking.

If their mission were exposing corruption generally, that would be noble, and they could be trusted. But when you clearly fall in line behind not just liberal issues generally, but Democratic machine politics specifically, it is only a matter of time before your ideology overwhelms your objectivity, and nobody takes you seriously anymore.

Posted by T.K. | February 24, 2008 2:40 AM

Campaign Diaries just came out with its latest">latest">http://www.campaigndiaries.com/houserankings">latest House ratings, with a detailed analysis of every vulnerable House race (and there are many!). THere are good news for both parties.

Posted by Daniel | February 24, 2008 12:31 PM

This head fake, putting the emphasis on the girl in the red dress, won't work. The NYT piece was about Crony Capitalism. And there's a lot more coming from Newsweek and Harper's ( the cover story by Ken Silverstein is titled: "Beltway Bacchanal"). Just last week Brent Wilkes, 53, a Bush Pioneer and defense contractor, got 12 years in prison: Wilkes is the mastermind behind the largest scandal in Congressional history - the Duke Cunningham case.
McCain can easily handle the faux journalists on FOX and Talk Radio, but can he really afford to take on serious journalists?
The Bush Pioneers were created by top Bush machine money wrangler Mercer Reynolds, III, who is now the top money wrangler for McCain '08. The dots are going to be very easy to connect as the money starts to flow in from Big Defense, Big Pharma, Big Oil, and Big Ag.

Posted by fougasseu | February 24, 2008 3:38 PM

The fact that Obama voted against providing medical assistance to infants that survive abortions even when Republicans in Illinois removed amendments that might infringe on Roe, shows that beneath the slick packaging of unity and post-partisanship, Obama is a doctrinaire liberal who ignored the plight of helpless infants because he was determined to satisfy each and every leftist special interest group.

http://cornellsun.com/node/27624

On abortion, Obama could not be any more radical in his views. The reason goes even beyond Obama’s desire for public funding for abortion, which forces all taxpayers, pro-life and pro-choice, to support abortion without a choice of their own. Simply put, Obama will not protect infants who are born alive either from live birth abortions or botched abortions. Congress and President Bush overwhelmingly passed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in 2002, but in Illinois, Obama blocked similar legislation. He claimed in a Senatorial debate that he would have voted for the national version, but not the Illinois version, because it encroached on Roe v. Wade. However, the sponsor of the bill, Illinois Senator Richard Winkel (R), offered to amend the bill, making it identical to the federal version. Even with this amendment, Obama, chair of the Health and Human Services Committee at the time, refused to put the bill up for a vote. He instead let the bill die in committee, putting politics over the life of not the unborn, but the born. Not even Santorum could match that on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Obama’s stance on abortion offers a preview of how liberal he really is.

http://grizzlygroundswell.com/archives/1408

We have always maintained that we do not have a dog in the abortion rights fight, and that we would never take sides unless a viable political entity went to the extreme of (1) trying to outlaw all abortions or (2) legalizing the murder of viable infants. We do not share the primarily religious belief that a fertilized egg is a “life,” but we do not see why anyone needs a non-theraputic partial birth abortion either. A woman who wants to terminate her pregnancy voluntarily can do so during the first few months of pregnancy, before the fetus has developed significantly and also while the procedure is easier on the woman.
If Barack Obama becomes the Democratic nominee, that will change. We will indeed have a dog in this fight, and Obama’s people will wish their campaign had met a Presa Canario, Rottweiler, or pit bull instead. We are confident that we can destroy Obama’s candidacy in Pennsylvania and possibly New York as long as we can get the cooperation of the active pro-life groups in both states, and there is no way Obama can win the election without these states. We are also confident that we will meet no significant resistance from pro-choice groups, because not many pro-choice people are going to associate their good names with infanticide: the killing of babies outside the uterus, as endorsed by Barack Obama.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/01/opinion/main3779519.shtml

While in the Illinois legislature, Obama opposed a Born-Alive Infants Bill. What this means is that when he, as a state legislator, was presented with the reality that babies who had survived abortions were being left to die, he would not raise his hand to provide those children legal protection. His reason: He didn’t want to cede ground to crazy pro-lifers. He warned: “Whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the Equal Protection Clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a ... a child - a nine-month-old child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place.”

Posted by obamahype | February 25, 2008 12:04 AM

Hello, Marc, commenters-

I agree w/ Marc that it seems extraordinarily unlikely that Weaver was the source for the NYT article....

Posted by ElectionNightHQ.com (McCain site) Publisher | February 25, 2008 12:24 AM

Lets all treat this as legit; I'm not about to bash the NYT because of a few "unnamed" sources. This one's abig revelation about the story that might help it out.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Posted by matt | February 25, 2008 9:16 AM