Scheunemann has some questionable policy positions as per this TPM article:

"As a top aide to then-Senate GOP leader Trent Lott, Scheunemann helped draft -- and acted as a driving force behind -- the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act (ILA), which essentially made "regime change" the official Iraq policy of the US.

Scheunemann was a board member of Bill Kristol's Project for a New American Century, which played a major role in agitating for the war. Scheunemann signed Kristol's influential letter to President Bush, sent nine days after 9/11, which asserted that failing to respond to the Al Qaeda attack by going after Saddam would "constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism." Scheunemann also served as a "consultant" to Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon while it was planning the war. And in late 2002, Scheunemann, with administration approval, founded the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), an advocacy group with the explicit goal of whipping up pro-war sentiment across the country.

Scheunemann was a crucial Washington backer of Ahmad Chalabi, the now-disgraced Iraqi exile who helped feed the CIA false intelligence on Saddam's WMD program and has since been accused of giving US state secrets to Iran. In the years leading up to the invasion, the two were so tight that the spokesman for Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress shared a Washington address with both CLI and Scheunemann's private lobbying firm and Scheunemann was mentioned in press reports as a candidate for the job of formal envoy to the Iraqi opposition.

He argued vociferously against giving the UN a significant role in stabilizing Iraq. And he also opposed leaving any members of Saddam's Baath party in government positions."

So McCain's chief foreign policy spokesperson is wrong on everything and pigheaded about it to boot. What has happened to the Republican Party?

Will the AK GOP be able to get someone else in his seat? I think I remember there being a primary challenger.

Never heard of the guy. I think he is the President's congressman actually. Just curious.

a position on a national stage, ie - interview, debate, what have you, What are we the citizens supposed to think when the candidates campaign comes back later and says that isn't the candidates position?

McCain has done this several times of late. He makes a statement only to be backtracked by folks at his campaign later. For example:

1) Here McCain says ALL the options are on the table for Social Security , including upping the cut off level of SS taxes and his campaign comes back later and says No, that isn't his position.

2) McCain said last weekend that he supports Arizona's ballot initiative that seeks to amend the state constitution to ban affirmative action. “I support it, yes,” said McCain when asked by host George Stephanopoulos. Later, McCain’s campaign “refused to say” it stood by McCain’s policy declaration: But McCain’s own campaign refused to say whether it stands by the candidate’s announcement that he supports the ballot initiative.

3) top econ adviser for McCain, Douglas Holtz-Eakin told Slate that just because McCain says something publicly about a policy, “that doesn’t mean it’s official.”

I don't get it. If I were to publicly contradict my boss I would surely have a short career. But McCain's campaign is doing this right and left. I can see wanting to be all things to all people, and back in the 1800's, that's exactly what politicians would do, deliver speeches to the audience they faced because no one in that audience saw the speech they gave at the previous town. But in this day and age, it's all over the intertubes & on tape.

I just don't get it.

A lot of us have been thinking about ways to encourage more participation by conservatives. Seems like we've been handed an opportunity these last few weeks if we can figure a way to take advantage of it.

The Redstate 3.0 upgrade has apparently been... ungood. Participation there is way down and bitching is way up. A number of regulars are taking breaks from the site until it seems to be functional again.

Maybe we can lure some of them here. If they find it interesting they might just stick around even if RS gets their show together.

So any ideas how? I'd particularly love to get Achance over. He's seemed disenchanted with RS for a while and he's got a wealth of insider information about Alask politics which is interesting. Blackhedd would be good too, but as he's a frontpage poster on RS that seems very unlikely. Naturally I'm not excluding the other posters, those two just leapt to mind.