Leader of GOP convention quits after Myanmar ties reported

AP ^ | 10 May 08 | AP Staff

[TADSLOS]

ST. PAUL, Minn. - The man picked by the John McCain campaign to run the 2008 Republican National Convention resigned Saturday after a report that his lobbying firm used to represent the military regime in Myanmar.

Doug Goodyear resigned as convention coordinator and issued a two sentence statement:

"Today I offered the convention my resignation so as not to become a distraction in this campaign. I continue to strongly support John McCain for president, and wish him the best of luck in this campaign."

Goodyear, chief executive of lobbying firm DCI Group, resigned a few hours after Newsweek posted a story posted online that the company was paid $348,000 in 2002 and 2003 to represent Myanmar's junta.

"We respect Mr. Goodyear's decision, and look forward to the convention in September," said Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign.

Cyclone Nargis left more than 60,000 people dead or missing, and the U.N. estimates that at least 1.5 million people have been severely affected. Human rights organizations and dissident groups have bitterly accused the junta of neglecting disaster victims and blocking foreign donations of relief supplies.

Justice Department records covering agents of foreign agents that are required to register with the U.S. government show DCI signed a contract to work to "improve relations between the United States and Myanmar" and to act as the junta's public relations agent in Washington.

Newsweek said the firm drafted news releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing claims by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses.

"It was our only foreign representation, it was for a short tenure, and it was six years ago," Newsweek quoted Goodyear as saying. The magazine said Goodyear added that the junta's record in the current cyclone crisis is "reprehensible."

The Newsweek article also reported that some of Goodyear's allies worry that worry the choice of Goodyear could fuel perceptions that McCain is surrounded by lobbyists. DCI Group earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil, General Motors and other clients, the report said.

Newsweek also reported DCI has been a pioneer in running "independent" expenditure campaigns by so-called 527 groups, the kind of operations that McCain has denounced in his battle for campaign finance reform.

The convention runs Sept. 1-4 at the Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul.

[TADSLOS]

Another one of McCain's fellow travelers just got thrown under the Straight Talk Express Bus. Is Mccain and the GOP so utterly inept to choose this guy in the first place or just "unlucky" that he was outed?

[Huck]

Yeah, they should have checked ppl for Burma ties. Give me a break.

[Eva]

Picked to run the convention? That’s not McCain’s choice. Even if he did suggest him, it’s hardly the same as being a foreign policy advisor like the one that Obama had to fire for meeting repeatedly with the leaders of Hamas. Then to divert attention from the Hamas endorsement of Obama, he tried to blame it on McCain.

The friends of Obama just keep getting better and better.

---

Obama Fires Foreign Policy Adviser for Meeting With Hamas

May 09, 2008 7:57 PM

The Times of London reports that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has fired one of his foreign policy advisers — Robert Malley — for meeting with the Palestinian group Hamas, which the U.S. State Department classifies as a terrorist organization.

“He was one of literally hundreds of informal, outside advisors,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton told ABC News, confirming the Times account.

Malley, a former official in the administration of former President Bill Clinton, is Middle East and North Africa program director for the International Crisis Group, a conflict resolution group.

“I’ve never hidden the fact that in my job with the International Crisis Group I meet all kinds of people,” Malley told the Times.

Malley has been a criticized in the past as insufficiently supportive of Israel — the New Republic’s Marty Peretz has defended Obama as pro-Israel but assailed Malley — though several Clintonistas have defended him from the charge.

He participated in the failed 2000 Camp David accords and said that Yasser Arafat was not the only one to blame for those talks breaking down.

[muawiyah]

After a while the guys in Congress come to think of the folks in the lobbying firms as just ordinary working people.

Which, of course, they are.

The "newsies" are intensely jealous of them.

Still, it would be a doggone good idea for McCain to get busy and DUMP all the people in Republican party operations who has had anything whatsoever to do with genocide or brutal dictatorships.

[TADSLOS]

Easy enough for a FReeper to look up, even easier for the National GOP staff to vette. DCI is the big dog 527 Republican player on K Street

I guess the GOP and McCain's superlative campaign staff weren't concerned about a 527 lobbyist running the GOP convention, or they really are inept. It's one or the other.

[org.whodat]

LOL, owned by lobbyists , controlled by lobbyists, but just do it behind closed doors.

[TADSLOS]

Yep. McCain-Feingold for thee but not for me. It’s the maverick way.

[Just A Nobody]

John McCain armed Kosovo Islamic terrorists

Americans of Albanian heritage collected a million dollars in one evening for the presidential campaign of Republican Senator John McCain, said the Albanian American Civic League yesterday, the lobby group headed by former Congressman Joe DioGuardi. A reception for McCain was held January 22 at the Saint Regis Hotel in Manhatten, and the senator, who is now leading in the runoff for the Republican party candidacy in the November elections, cut his campaign in Florida by one day to attend this gathering.

"Even in 1998 when we had problems with Milosevic, McCain did everything that we asked of him to the benefit of the Albanian people, including arming the KLA", announced DioGuardi. "We are American Albanians and we need a leader who will strengthen this country... We must support John McCain because he did everything we asked of him for Kosovo, from supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army to supporting the independence of Kosovo. Two years ago he spoke in Brussels and said that independence is the only solution", concluded this former congressman who has been fighting for the independence of Kosovo and Metohija for more than twenty years.

He explained that the first thing McCain said to him when he entered the hotel in Manhatten on January 22: "Joe, I saw your people in Michigan, and in South Carolina and in New Hampshire", from which this lobbyist deduced that all Americans of Albanian background will be voting for the senator from Arizona.

[combat_boots]

Stallone’s last movie was supposedly set in Burma or filmed there. Do we shun Rambo now, too?

Then again, what exactly is the intricate web of Soros organizations and entities if not lobbying efforts? Shall we name them all? Can we?

[AmericanInTokyo]

We need to start lobbying Jim for a McCAIN TRUTH FILE index, just as there is an OBAMA TRUTH FILE index on this site. I can see more and more of these revelations...not to mention questionable things coming out of Obama’s camp this year. What a “choice”.

[CharlesWayneCT]

The real scandal is how these organizations, who have essentially shut McCain out of ALL coverage, and ANY positive coverage, for the past four weeks, have ALL run major headlined stories about this — when it has nothing to do with McCain.

[AmericanInTokyo]

These murderous Myanmar military junta bastards want to get into the inside of a McCain Administration, and through the well paid K-Street Lobbyists in D.C., a.k.a., "Agents of Influence", they definitely have an "in". They are like so many flies landing on a rotten piece of fruit trying to burrow deep inside. At least one of them was knocked out.

Look here!

If we are good, vigilant, patriotic Americans, we will keep a very close eye on these D.C. shenanigans, whether they occur within the Obama, Clinton OR McCain camps.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Since when did the AP and Newsweek cast brutal dictatorships in a bad light?

[TADSLOS]

The real scandal is how these organizations, who have essentially shut McCain out of ALL coverage, and ANY positive coverage, for the past four weeks, have ALL run major headlined stories about this — when it has nothing to do with McCain.

And you and the GOP were expecting otherwise?

[TADSLOS]

Since when did the AP and Newsweek cast brutal dictatorships in a bad light?

I guess they are turning into mavericks too. /s/

[Digger]

Another one of McCain's fellow travelers just got thrown under the Straight Talk Express Bus. Is Mccain and the GOP so utterly inept to choose this guy in the first place or just "unlucky" that he was outed?

I take it back.These two corrupt parties aren't the same. The (R) run with their tails dragging anytime these is an issue while the other stands strong. What a pathetic bunch of fools they are.

[mountainbunny]

Picked to run the convention? That’s not McCain’s choice.

This says otherwise:
The PR executive John McCain just tapped to help run the GOP convention quit today after a report that his firm once represented the Burmese junta that is now doing little to relieve its people from the devastation incurred by this week’s cyclone.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0508/McCain_convention_chief_quits_after_past_ties_to_Burma_revealed.html

[Once-Ler]

Another one of McCain's fellow travelers just got thrown under the Straight Talk Express Bus.

That is certainly the reaction the MSM was hoping from the story.

[Eva]

Yes, I see that McCain had picked the guy to help run the convention, just last week and this week he quit. So, big deal. Working for a lobby group that sometimes takes on controversial clients has it’s risks, helping to run a convention is not the same as a foreign policy advisor who meets with the leaders of Hamas and secures the endorsement of Hamas for the candidate. Running a convention is like being a wedding planner, It’s no big deal. Actually that guy was probably supposed to help raise funds. It is really no big deaL.

[mountainbunny]

Running a convention is like being a wedding planner, It’s no big deal. Actually that guy was probably supposed to help raise funds. It is really no big deaL.

At which point does it become a big deal?

Like... is this a big deal?

Jerry Perenchio is the National Finance Co-Chair of the McCain 2008 Campaign?

Perenchio pours money into open border initiatives hand over fist, and dumped millions of dollars into trying to defeat a measure to teach English to school children.

See: http://michellemalkin.com/2008/01/28/open-borders-campaign-finance-hypocrisy-eco-radicalism-mccains-billionaire-national-finance-co-chair-jerry-perenchio/

Or how about Juan Hernandez, McCain's Director of Hispanic Outreach and open borders fanatic?

See: http://michellemalkin.com/2008/01/25/john-mccains-open-borders-outreach-director-the-next-dhs-secretary/

So, could you describe the moment when one's sleazy, anti-law, anti-American associations become a big deal?