So Why Is Mark McKinnon Still with McCain?

"I would simply be uncomfortable being in a campaign that would be inevitably attacking Barack Obama." - Top John McCain media strategist Mark McKinnon on February 13, explaining why he would leave the Republican's campaign if Obama became the Democratic nominee.

These ads were not made by McCain, but they are from an organization he's directly linked to and arguably the nominal head of.

If McKinnon is true to his word, he should leave now; yet he's rolling along -- quite literally -- on McCain's bus in Kentucky.

"In the Bush campaign we used to say that we won the campaign in 2000 and 2004 between March and June," McKinnon told Time earlier today. "And I think the way things are going we could say that McCain won this election between March and June."

Well if it'll be over by then, why ever leave?

Follow John R. Bohrer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JRBwrites

Comments

[jaynevada]

02:39 AM on 04/25/2008

Quite honestly, someone who has a modicum of honesty and worked for Bush in 2000 and 2004 should be in heaven working for McCain.

[dapperd72]

03:54 PM on 04/24/2008

I'm unfamiliar with this supposed remark by McKinnon, but I know many former Bush allies have left his side since 2000 for various reasons of disillusionment. Anyone who doubts Clinton's ability to unite Republicans against her needs only to look at my mainly Republican family on my father's side. My father & one uncle in particular despise the Clintons (& Democrats generally) more than Tom Cruise & John Travolta despise "suppressive persons" (anyone who challenges Scientology) as if Democrats are a disease that need to be exterminated. Obama's references in San Francisco to economically depressed people clinging to guns & religion was a tacit reference to my own untoward experience in PA with rednecks as I call them. The most egregious example of this culture is in Schuylkill County in Hegins, PA, where for over 7 decades thru 1996, the local populace traditionally massacred hundreds of pigeons every Labor Day in their Hegins Pigeon Shoot. I personally bore witness to this senseless slaughter & encountered several people representing the Ku Klux Klan with the popular racist attitude embodied in their slogan (pardon the epithet), "Pigeons are like n*ggers. The only good one is a dead one." This is just a takeoff from Andrew Jackson's attitude about Native Americans, but no isolated incident in PA, as my experience was that the state is largely bigoted in general, despite a small segment of forward-thinking people there.

[independentrepublicrat]

12:26 PM on 04/24/2008

Get serious. McKinnon was clear that he would leave IF Obama became the nominee. Applying his quote out of context is as silly as trying to blame him for NC hick politics. This is how it is done in NC. I was there during the Jesse Helms pink-slip-white-hands-ad and no state plays race politics more shrewdly than NC. McKinnon has kept his word thus far because Obama isn't the nominee yet. Why don't you write a real explanation for that racist debacle instead.

I'm interested in finally having a personal question answered: Which Carolina is more racist, South or North? This election year affords me the opportunity to finally have that question answered sufficiently to my satisfaction. This is a battle of which of these sister states grows the best or most racists...a title fight between Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, if you will. So don't fuk with the Carolinas experiment before the last vote is counted in November as I need to know in which state not to retire. BUTT OUT MENACE! ---just kidding, sort of

[OtayPanky]

11:24 AM on 04/24/2008

Barack (whom I support) isn't the nominee yet. Hillary could still snatch it away. It's not likely, but it's certainly possible. And if she did, McKinnon would (apparently) stay on to help McCain beat her.

It makes no sense at all to expect McKinnon to leave now.

[Trace8089]

10:12 AM on 04/24/2008

McKinnon made the statement He'd leave to set up McCain's as a good cop and GOP 527's as the bad cop. They want to pretend McCain is a good guy that will call his fellow republicans to task. While it's more republican wink and nod politics following the southern strategy. If, you think the Clintons have played dirty. Just wait till the GOP machine gets warmed up. The Clinton attacks will seem tame.

[dutchess2]

12:19 AM on 04/24/2008

Obama's comments were about blue collar workers.... closed factories and mills, whose medical coverage went with the jobs, whose pensions were cancelled by corporations that stiffed the workers and went overseas.... People who had given up hope that Washington would do anything to help.

McCain said he finds Obama"s comments "elitist," to say the least. He noted that some of the people Obama was talking about lived through the Depression and fought in World War II.

"This same group of Americans ? went out and fought the Second World War and made the world a safer democracy. Those are the values that they had then and they have today. So yes, I think those are elitist remarks to say the least," he said."

People who endured the Great Depression and served in WWII would be 80 or more years old, way way beyond blue collar working age....not the age group Obama was talking about at all.

McCain didn't have a clue,

MSNBC prattled about it all afternoon and never caught on.... and neither did Fox....

[loper2008]

11:59 PM on 04/23/2008

Mark should stay. The McCain campaign has totally sucked and I want it to stay that way.

[DavePM]

11:15 PM on 04/23/2008

Money.

[dutchess2]

11:13 PM on 04/23/2008

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS REPORT?

CAN YOU SPOT IT? FOX NEWS AND MSNBC HAVE BOTH OVERLOOKED IT...


McCain said he finds Obama’s comments ”elitist,” to say the least. He noted that some of the people Obama was talking about lived through the Depression and fought in World War II.

This same group of Americans … went out and fought the Second World War and made the world a safer democracy. Those are the values that they had then and they have today. So yes, I think those are elitist remarks to say the least,” he said


http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/04/23/mccain-disavows-ad-but-calls-obama-bitter-comments-elitist/

I'll tap back to see if anyone has spotted it....soon!

[S1m0n]

12:00 PM on 04/24/2008

"McCain said he finds Obama"s comments "elitist," to say the least."

In the mouths of the McCain & Clinton campaign members, calling Obama 'elitest' really means, "that n-word thinks he's better than you!"

[PioneerKing]

09:51 PM on 04/23/2008

Talk is cheap. McKinnon is not going anywhere.