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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Shocker: 'NY Times' finally unleashes its bombshell McCain/female lobbyist story

It's been up on the Times site and all over MSNBC, if you haven't caught up with it yet. I had forgotten about the tale myself -- back around Christmas that brief flap over a rumored (via Drudge) story that the paper had linking McCain, perhaps romantically, to a female lobbyist much younger than himself who also presented some Congressional ethics problems. It was then reported that McCain and the unnamed woman had hired fixer Bob Bennett to strong arm the Times. Whatever went down, the story never ran. Until tonight. Maybe there is nothing to the Times story, but coincidentally, earlier today I posted (below) an old Times story about McCain cheating on his ailing first wife with his current wife Cindy.

UPDATE: McCain campaign calls story a "hit and run smear campaign" -- but while it says he has not violated the ethics of his job it does not specifically deny any romantic link....Also, it is amazing to see them claim, considering his steep involvement in the Keating scandal, that he has "never done favors for special interests or lobbyists."....Will be interesting to see how Rush Limbaugh et al play this tomorrow: Who do they hate more, McCain or the NYT?.... Mark Halperin at his "The Page" at Time.com says insiders are asking: "What, if anything, did the Times not publish that it had?" and "How much will other print organizations follow up?".... The Washington Post is out with its own much slimmer story on the same subject. It carried a Howie Kurtz story last December 21 that covered the original "spiking" of the story....Reportedly Politico and the L.A. Times were also on the story at some point.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why now -- even though there's no smoking gun, running this story now instead of December is a HUGE favor to McCain. Either run it when it's ready, or not at all. Printing this hours after McCain clinched the nomination remind me of the Iran hostage being freed minutes after Reagan become president. Coincidence? I think not.

Anonymous said...

McCain's "steep involvement" in the Keating 5? Last night Bob Bennett, who was the chief cousel for the investigation of the Keating 5 said he investigated McCain for 1.5 years and his recommendation was to drop McCain because he did nothing wrong. This Democrat said the only reason the Dems kept him as part of the 5 was so it wouldn't be all Democrats and was a purly political move.

Oh, well, never mind the facts when it's so much easier to call it "steep involvement".

Anonymous said...

McCain's "steep involvement" in the Keating 5? Last night Bob Bennett, who was the chief cousel for the investigation of the Keating 5 said he investigated McCain for 1.5 years and his recommendation was to drop McCain because he did nothing wrong. This Democrat said the only reason the Dems kept him as part of the 5 was so it wouldn't be all Democrats and was a purly political move.

Oh, well, never mind the facts when it's so much easier to call it "steep involvement".

Anonymous said...

It is unwise to raise any issue of infidelity or sexual straying regarding any candidate in any campaign whatsoever involving the Clintons. It's like taking a poke at a hornet's nest.
(Also, eight-year-old bombshells are usually duds -- cf. John F. Kennedy,Robert Kennedy, et al.)
Another anon. (We're prolific)