Free Republic

The big Sarah Palin news today is that she has lost her longtime foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann. Scheunemann is a well-known neoconservative who worked for Jesse Helms and was intimately involved in the push for the Iraq war. He later became an aide to John McCain on the 2008 presidential campaign, where he met and linked up with Palin. He's been associated with her ever since. The question is: Why did they Scheunemann, who runs the lobbying firm Orion Strategies, leave Palin now?

Dr. Robert Rupp, Associate Professor of History at West Virginia Wesleyan, also does some work as a consultant. Lately, his consulting work led him to advise a controversial new poll out on the U.S. Senate race in West Virginia, commissioned by Marshall University's School of Journalism and Mass Communications. That poll, released on Friday, depicted Democratic candidate Joe Manchin leading Republican John Raese by 10 points. The poll has been met with skepticism throughout West Virginia, since all other polls done by nationally-recognized pollsters show a much tighter race, either showing a tie or either Raese or Manchin leading by...

WASHINGTON - Sarah Palin, seen as a possible Republican presidential candidate, has paid tens of thousands of dollars for foreign policy advice to a U.S. firm that represents three overseas governments, campaign finance documents show. While legal, the adviser’s work as an agent for other countries raises questions about whether Palin is receiving impartial information about foreign relations and could be become a subject of debate if she runs for president or another elected office. Financial reports filed by the former Alaska governor’s fundraising committee known as SarahPAC, show that between December 2009 and the end of May 2010, it...

John McCain's top foreign-policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, is a leading expert on U.S.-allied Georgia -- and was a paid lobbyist for the former Soviet republic until March, in the run-up to what has become a major battle between Georgia and Russia. Democratic rival Barack Obama's presidential campaign was quick to try to paint Mr. Scheunemann's dual roles as a conflict of interest after Sen. McCain swiftly took Georgia's side in the dispute, and cited it as evidence that Sen. McCain is "ensconced in a lobbyist culture," as Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan told reporters over the weekend. But given the rapid...