John McCain Loses Outsider and Maverick Creds When His Work With International Republican Institute is Considered

John McCain became president of the International Republican Institute because of his strong win in the 1992 election, one of  the Republicans' bright spots.

Excerpt NY Times report "Democracy Group Gives Donors Access to McCain ":

Over the years, Mr. McCain has nurtured a reputation for bucking the Republican establishment and criticizing the influence of special interests in politics. But an examination of his leadership of the Republican institute — one of the least-chronicled aspects of his political life — reveals an organization in many ways at odds with the political outsider image that has become a touchstone of the McCain campaign for president.

Certainly the institute’s mission is in keeping with Mr. McCain’s full-throated support for exporting American democratic values. Yet the institute is also something of a revolving door for lobbyists and out-of-power Republicans that offers big donors a way of helping both the party and the institute’s chairman, who is the only sitting member of Congress — and now candidate for president — ever to head one of the democracy groups.

Operating without the sort of limits placed on campaign fund-raising, the institute under Mr. McCain has solicited millions of dollars for its operations from some 560 defense contractors, lobbying firms, oil companies and other corporations, many with issues before Senate committees Mr. McCain was on.

And the report gets even more interesting on the second and third pages.

This is the group which had a member help set up conditions leading to the Haiti coup in 2004.  You remember the one in which US forces virtually kidnapped the president by warning him to go with them or die?  Also the president of this group praised the aborted coup against Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. 

tags: john mccain  mccain  haiti  hugo chavez  venezuela  

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