Posted on 05/08/2012 7:50:45 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Those who were paying attention during the 2008 presidential election know of John McCain’s campaign manager Steve Schmidt, and his equally incompetent cohort Nicole Wallace. We also know that the Schmidt’s many failures during that election were so strong, and so damaging to his already dubious reputation, he, and Wallace, looked for a scapegoat to pin the blame on.
In fact, as John Nolte reported on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hollywood a memo was released that proves the attempt to “save” Schmidt and help rewrite history in a way to make him look good, and Sarah Palin, the only bright spot in that campaign, look bad.
Schmidt has consistently lied about the facts of the campaign. Many of those lies ended up in the failed HBO movie Game Change. As Stacy Drake pointed out, HBO’s own graphics department helped prove the lies, as they had a “time stamp”” on one scene, describing an incident that never occurred, but was depicted in the movie.
As Stacy proved, at the exact time Schmidt and company alleged Governor Palin was having some sort of mental breakdown, she was in fact out at a campaign event and having a damned good time! Stacy even includes video backup of the events!
Many in the GOP are repeating the lie that Sarah wasn’t vetted, something completely debunked years ago by none other than A.B. Culvahouse, the former Reagan adviser turned high powered D.C. attorney, who vetted all of the prospective vice presidential candidates for John McCain. It’s their objective to repeat the lie long enough that it becomes accepted fact.
With that said, Whitney Pitcher wonders why no one has taken time to vet Steve Schmidt. Had the McCain campaign done their due diligence, and vetted this petty little man, Senator McCain might just be President McCain instead. As Whitney points out Schmidt’s entire résumé is cluttered with failure upon failure. Add in the fact he has no problem dumping on his former employers rather than own up to his own inability to perform, and you start to see where the problem with 2008 truly lies.
Here’s a taste of what Whitney writes for Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government:
In a recent article at the National Review, John McCain’s failed 2008 campaign manager Steve Schmidt is quoted as saying “it will be a very long time before questions about capability and preparedness are not a part of the process.” The implication is that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was neither “prepared” nor “capable” to be vice president in the 2008 cycle, and that now hangs over the current vice presidential selection process.
In his comments about the VP selection process, Schmidt indicates a pretty simple concept– “capability and preparedness” are characteristics that a presidential nominee would seek in his or her running mate.
However, Schmidt’s comments indicate that the selection process and the entire campaign he was involved in during 2008 did not consider such factors, which leads one to ask, “did Steve Schmidt have the ‘capability and preparedness’ necessary to perform his role as campaign strategist?“
In other words, let the vetting of Steve Schmidt begin.
The 42 year-old New Jersey native’s campaign experience started with work for four failed state and national races during his mid to late twenties—ranging from the Kentucky Attorney General’s race in 1995 to working as Communication Director for Lamar Alexander’s 2000 presidential bid. He also managed failed Lt. Governor and Senatorial bids in California in 1998.
Schmidt later worked in a few Republican party positions before becoming both a part of the Bush White House and the Bush re-election campaign in 2004, working with Karl Rove and overseeing the re-election “war room.” In fact, he was often called a “Rove protégé,” playing a senior role in the Bush 2004 re-election and later working for the Bush administration on Iraq media communication and with the confirmation processes of Bush Supreme Court appointees . He later worked on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign in 2006.
Steve Schmidt was picked up by the McCain campaign in December of 2006 as a senior adviser to Senator McCain’s presidential campaign-in-waiting. Schmidt was later given “full operational control” of McCain’s presidential bid, amidst some dissatisfaction with the campaign’s trajectory.
[ .... ]
In short, Schmidt was in control of the political and messaging operations of the campaign. Two messaging strategies proved to be costly for the McCain campaign—the handling of both McCain and Palin in general and the error of suspending the campaign in the midst of the financial crisis. The campaign was criticized for waiting nearly two weeks between Governor Palin’s introduction as the VP pick and her first interview with Charlie Gibson.
E-mails of Governor Palin’s obtained by the Anchorage Daily News in January of 2009 noted that prior to being selected as the VP candidate, Governor Palin was slated to give interviews to Newsweek, NPR, Fox News and a host of other outlets at the RNC convention as a McCain campaign surrogate. Yet after she was picked as VP, she was silenced and kept from the media.
This poor campaign messaging approach and shackling of the personable Palin allowed the biased media—including the likes of Tina Fey—to set the tone and narrative of the debate over Palin. Thus, much of the public to this day believe Fey’s words about the proximity of Palin’s home to Russia were instead Palin’s words. The media drove the campaign to be defensive and incoherent rather than assertive and clear.
A third messaging strategy sprouted from the failures of the first two. Leaked memos from the waning days of the McCain campaign indicated that Schmidt and his buddies aimed to protect Schmidt’s reputation in the impending electoral loss. These memos and Schmidt’s desire to deflect blame likely provided the impetus for the anonymous lies spread about Governor Palin’s geographic knowledge following the campaign. The strategy from the leaked memos included reaching out to “influential reporters.” One of these reporters included Game Change co-author Mark Halperin.
Fast forward to 2012, and Schmidt is still attempting to save face by projecting his failures as an incapable strategist onto the Vice Presidential candidate he helped choose and who provided the only spark in an otherwise exceedingly dull campaign. This is why Schmidt played an admitted instrumental role as one of the sources for Halperin’s book and in the HBO adaptation of the book, which fallaciously disparaged Palin while painting a sympathetic image of Schmidt.
For example, the film adaptation of Game Change, whose premiere Schmidt attended, misrepresented the Troopergate scandal [Or as Sarah calls it Tazergate ~Gary] of which Palin was exonerated. Palin’s legal counsel at the time, Thomas van Flein, recounted his first interaction with Schmidt.
Whitney has much more on Schmidt and this attempted rewrite of history, including how he failed to vet Obama properly, or highlight Sarah’s incredible record as Governor of Alaska. Click here to read it all.
no panic. Not even in Detroit.
Was anyone in the McCain campaign qualified?
Clearly, one of the most important lines from the article. It also helps explain the cover that Schmidt has gotten for his incompetent management of the McCain campaign. Freepers and Republican stalwarts saw what a disaster the McCain campaign was early on and throughout the campaign.
Schmidt has worked harder since November, 2008 protecting his reputation than he ever did trying to get McCain elected. I would love to know if or how much money he has pocketed from Romney and Romney surrogates.
TS
Had she just stayed Governor, she could have been President.
I hate to say I knew it at the time.
Steve Schmidt isn’t qualified to manage your kid’s campaign for Student Council.
So you’re saying you would turn down a major party vice presidential nomination? Really?
We really dodged a bullet there... good thing we ended up with our current genius VP...campaign consultants are brilliant ...jus' askum.
Nope.......not even McCain. Sarah was the only bright star in that campaign and knucklehead wouldn’t have gotten the votes he did if it weren’t for her.
Here I thought Steve Schmidt’s only talent was making Ed Schultz look like the most intelligent one in the room on MSNBC.
Hell, even Meaghan McCain wasn't qualified to be First Daughter.
Wrong question....... it should read "Was John McCain qualified to be president?"
I know....I know....now someone will reply that MY question is S-T-U-P-I-D.
>>work for four failed state and national races<<
Unfortunately, there are way too many people (political and otherwise) that think that experience losing (or being ineffective) is still better than less experience. In other words, failure is better than non-failure.
Unless of course the reason that Schmidt and his fellow “Bushie” Nicole Wallace were assigned to the McCain campaign was to “Help” along the way with an occasional banana peel. So taking out a potential rival along the way is all part of the job description.
It’s all about Jeb 2016 for them.
Ewwww......perish the thought! LOL
I think your theory is silly. Schmidt falling on his sword for Bush.
Much more likely scenario is he was not very skilled.
Yep. Imagine a FRESH (and much more experienced) Sarah Palin lighting up the ultra-weak GOP field last year, waxing brilliantly about ENERGY, about which her expertise is second to none - and perfectly timed to take on Obama. Sad.
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