Donehue is listed as an "Associate Consultant and Vice President" for Tompkins/Thompson/Sullivan, a "Partner/Consultant" for Under the Power Lines, and an "Associate" for Mark Direct. Taking these titles at face value, it would appear that Donehue had a subordinate relationship to Warren Tompkins at both Tompkins/Thompson/Sullivan and Mark Direct.
At Under The Power Lines, as a "Partner/Consultant", the relationship to the founder Tompkins is not crystal clear. However, judging from the context of the other relationships, do you think it would be reasonable to assume that Donehue was subordinate to Warren Tompkins at Under the Power Lines as well?
I don’t know. I thought the specific story was about the “Under the Power Lines” company, that it was THAT company’s web site that was associated with the anti-fred web site.
The question I thought was whether Donehue could have taken the action he did using the resources he did without Tompkin’s approval. I don’t see any evidence the other two companies were involved, only the web resource of the company for which Donehue is a partner.
I’ll just say this in conclusion. If the web site had been full of false attacks, if there was clear evidence Tompkins knew about it and didn’t stop it, if there was any serious breach of trust, those would be things that would make me at least think a little more about this.
But a trivial, common campaign tactic, exercised by someone not directly associated with a campaign, that was eliminated as soon as it became known, that the candidate has publicly DENOUNCED — I think I can safely put this one behind me, barring any more FACTS showing that Romney, Tompkins, and Donehue are lying to me.
Romney will be associated with this in the minds of many no matter what else happens. People will always remember that “anti-fred” site associated with the “Romney” camp.
That’s a far cry from the story being “Fred Thompson Campaign calls Mitt Romney a liar”. You don’t simply back off and forget when one campaign accuses the other campaign of lying. That’s the kind of thing that could prevent candidates from endorsing one another later, and prevent their supporters from coming on board.
A smart candidate would drop this, and certainly discourage personal attacks on their opposition. Romney did this by denouncing the site. Thompson should do this by repudiating the statement of his staff that Romney is lying.
Then we can all get back to fighting over which candidate’s change in positions is more “sincere”. :-)