Schmidt, Steve

NO MERRI

see Lincoln pjt

b2 spox swift boat

pretty freq trms, msnbc, alternet

denounced gohmert re grijalva covid?

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an 7 26

On Friday, a prominent Republican declared Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “one of the greatest villains across America’s 250-year history.” His legacy, it was asserted, will be tied to his role in breaking the Senate’s ability to function.

This is according to Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt, a longtime GOP insider who has served as a political strategist for the likes of George W. Bush and John McCain. Amid rumors and speculation about the condition of McConnell’s health — who has reportedly been in the hospital for some weeks after being discovered unconscious and receiving CPR, with some saying he may be “brain dead” — Schmidt argues, “The American people are owed candor when one of the most powerful elected officials in the country suffers a grave medical emergency.”

According to Schmidt, Americans cannot trust “carefully curated assurances from political allies whose first instinct is to protect an institution, a party, or a reputation — particularly when those assurances come from people who have no credibility whatsoever. Scott Jennings doesn’t have credibility, and neither do Senate Majority Leader John Thune and his number two John Barrasso from Wyoming,” the three of whom claimed to have spoken with hospitalized McConnell for “20 minutes.”

As Schmidt explains, not only is it highly unlikely that McConnell was capable of having such a conversation, noting that “an 84-year-old who had CPR performed on him before being put in an ambulance has a roughly six percent chance of ever walking out of a hospital,” but Americans have no reason to believe leaders who are unwilling to give a straight answer to who won the 2020 election.

And in this context, writes Schmidt, “the historical verdict on Mitch McConnell’s career is already taking shape. The high court of history is convening. The judgement will be appropriately brutal for service so unpatriotic and selfish. He’s one of the greatest villains across America’s 250-year history. Mitch McConnell destroyed the functioning and integrity of the US Senate, which was once known as the world’s greatest deliberative body. Today, it’s a joke.”

According to Schmidt, “Mitch McConnell was precisely the type of man George Washington warned about in his farewell. He’s done incredible damage to the American republic. He lived his life as a partisan cancer, and here at the end, he’s earned his looming two-word obituary: good riddance. He leaves behind a Senate that’s become a battlefield where power eclipses principle, and procedural warfare has replaced persuasion.”

The turning point, writes Schmidt, came with McConnell’s “refusal to allow Merrick Garland’s nomination even to receive a hearing ... Four years later, his determination to confirm Amy Coney Barrett weeks before a presidential election established a second rule that directly contradicted the first. Many Americans concluded that there were no rules at all. Only power.”

And what’s more, argues Schmidt, “The damage extended beyond the Senate chamber. Public confidence in the Supreme Court suffered enormously as millions came to see the institution not as an independent branch of government, but as another arena for raw political combat. History will remember that, and so will history remember his relationship with Donald Trump. No Republican leader understood Trump’s character more clearly. Few warned more eloquently about it. Yet when confronted with the defining challenge of his political life, Mitch McConnell repeatedly chose accommodation over confrontation.”

“That cowardice will be his epithet, and when he meets the supreme judge of the universe the grace he will need is something he didn’t practice in this life,” Schmidt concludes. “McConnell leaves behind a Senate that is weaker than the one he inherited, a judiciary viewed by millions with deeper suspicion than before, and a political culture in which power too often became an end unto itself. He lived his life as a constitutional vandal who lifted a fascist he despised into a position to wreck the institutions McConnell professed to revere, but really didn’t.”

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AN 4 26

President Donald Trump was the seeming victim of an assassination attempt on Saturday — and one ex-presidential adviser, who served Trump’s Republican predecessor, says the president himself bears partial responsibility for what happened.

“This isn’t normal,” wrote Steve Schmidt, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, on Sunday. “It isn’t random. And no matter how loudly the MAGA movement insists, it isn’t the fault of Donald Trump’s critics. The argument that criticism of Donald Trump somehow incites violence against him isn’t just wrong. It’s an inversion of reality so brazen that it demands to be confronted directly.”

Schmidt then added, “Because over the last decade, no figure in American life has done more to normalize violent rhetoric than Donald Trump.”

After clarifying that the only person directly responsible for the attempt is the would-be shooter, Schmidt explained that Trump has intentionally sowed violence into American political life with his rhetoric. For this reason, Schmidt concluded, it is hardly a coincidence that he has been targeted so many times for violence himself.

“Donald Trump has spent 12 years saturating the American bloodstream with violent imagery, threats, and suggestions that are sometimes explicit and sometimes coy, but they are always deliberate,” Schmidt wrote. “This is the same man who, during the 2016 campaign, mused that ‘the Second Amendment people’ might be able to ‘do something’ about his opponent. During a 2020 presidential debate, Trump told the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by.’ This is the same man who has repeatedly invoked apocalyptic language, warning of a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses power.”

Schmidt concluded, “This isn’t stray rhetoric. It’s a pattern of suggestion and menace. It’s a pattern of telling supporters that violence is both inevitable and, at times, justified. And here is the essential point that must not be lost: Donald Trump doesn’t speak like other politicians. He speaks in a language of implication. He constructs a world in which enemies are not just wrong, but existential threats. He frames elections not as contests, but as battles for survival. He always hints that there are people who can act where he can’t.”

As such, Schmidt described it as a “grotesque inversion” for Trump supporters to claim the president’s critics, rather than the president himself, created the environment in which the would-be shooting could happen.

“Donald Trump didn’t cause that man to pick up a weapon, but Donald Trump has spent years making violence feel like part of the political conversation,” Schmidt argued. “He has lowered the temperature threshold at which rage becomes action. He has blurred the line between metaphor and instruction. And he has done it more consistently, more visibly, and more successfully than any political figure of this era.”

For these reasons, and because free speech is so vital to a democratic society, Schmidt concluded that “a country can’t survive when its most powerful political figure floods the public square with violent language, and then demands immunity from scrutiny when violence follows. A country cannot remain free when criticism is recast as incitement, and incitement is excused as politics.”

Schmidt is not alone among experts to place the blame for anti-Trump violence partially at the president’s own feet. Federico Finchelstein, chair of the history department at the New School for Social Research and author of "A Brief History of Fascist Lies," told this journalist for Salon in 2024 that there is a "kind of dissonance between what Trump is saying and what is going on. And this has been the case with totalitarians and fascists for decades, that they say stuff that doesn't connect to reality." He added that it’s “shocking” that “the person that has promoted violence through rhetoric, and even sometimes the glorification of that violence, the idea that that person can complain about the 'rhetorical violence' of his enemies.”

Finchelstein also compared Trump to history’s most infamous fascist leader, arguing he "does this kind of thing again and again, and that's why he reminds us of [Nazi Germany dictator Adolf] Hitler." Based on his analysis, this means that Trump "follows Hitler's playbook in projecting onto his enemies all his desires, fantasies, and aspirations. This includes, of course, as he said, 'retribution' and violence."

Theda Skocpol, a Harvard University sociologist and political scientist who authored "The Missing Middle," also told Salon that "there are resemblances [to Hitler], especially when demonization happens. Or calling groups enemies or unclean."

At the time of the article, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Salon that "it's been less [than] 72 hours since the second assassination attempt on President Trump's life and the media is already back to comparing President Trump to Hitler. It's disgusting. This is why Americans have zero trust in the liberal mainstream media."

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AN 12 25

A prominent group of anti-Trump former Republicans are spending big to combat President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress, pouring support into Democratic candidates to "defeat MAGA," according to a new Politico report.

The move comes from the Save America Movement organization, a political action committee (PAC) co-founded by former moderate Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, who also helped found The Lincoln Project, another anti-Trump PAC. While the Lincoln Project is specifically directed at Trump, the Save America Movement is more directly focused on opposing the broader Republican Party under his leadership.

To this end, coming off of bruising electoral losses for the GOP in recent off-year elections, the PAC has now launched an effort to "pour up to $100 million into as many as 60 GOP-controlled House seats ahead of the midterms," Politico explained. This will be the PAC's first attempt at direct electoral advocacy, "after it has spent significant capital protesting [Trump's] return to office, which it deems a fundamental threat to American freedoms."

“The Save America Movement was started with the express mission of defeating MAGA, but the electoral side, particularly the 2026 elections, are absolutely critical to that mission,” Mary Corcoran, co-founder and executive director for the PAC, said in a statement to Politico.

The parties in opposition to the sitting president are typically favored in midterm races, but the most recent off-year elections have given Democrats even more reason to expect a strong showing in 2026. Earlier last month, the likes of Mikie Sherill in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Zohran Mamdani in New York Citysaw significant margins of victory over their GOP and independent opponents, and crucially saw major wins with key demographics that swung for Trump in 2024. While the party lost a recent Tennessee special election for a vacant House seat, the loss by only 9 points in a district Trump won by 22 also signaled a major shift in voter support away from Republicans.

The Save America Movement already has a list of 10 House seats it is hoping to pour fundraising dollars into for 2026, "spanning Alaska to Florida," according to a memo shared with Politico.

"The seats the group is already targeting range from battleground areas like WI-03 — where Democrat Rebecca Cooke is making another run at unseating GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden after losing narrowly last year — to the solid red MN-08, where GOP Rep. Pete Stauber won by 17 points in 2024," Politico explained.

When pressed about the feasibility of the fundraising goal, Corcoran shared with the outlet, "what I can tell you is that the response from donors has been very positive.”

The PAC is also looking to beat Republicans at their own game and try to reach voters early, much earlier than the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee typically does for midterm races.

“Republicans have always been really good about speaking to voters early,” Corcoran explained. “We need to fill that gap and ensure by the time the candidates are actually campaigning, the voters already have a perspective in their minds about how they’re going to vote.”

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tom b an 7 22

According to a report from the Guardian, Donald Trump is headed up to Alaska this weekend where he will headline a fundraiser for former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin (R) to boost her runfor an open House seat.guk?

As the Guardian's David Smith wrote, it is extraordinary that the former president is traveling such a long distance for a GOP nominee he has endorsed, but there are indications that each has a need for each other as they try and re-launch their politcial careers.

As the report notes, Trump needs a guaranteed win in the midterm elections -- which Palin could provide in conservative Alaska -- to bolster his credibility as a kingmaker, and the former Alaska governor is trying to raise her national profile once again after being shunted off into the political wilderness.

According to Brown University political scientist Wendy Schiller, a Palin win would thrust her into the spotlight to the detriment of other far-right lawmakers.

“She’ll become literally the queen bee of the radical-right women in the party and she’ll get all the media attention. That’s not going to sit very well with people like [extremist congresswoman] Lauren Boebert," Schiller explained.

According to the report, "Trump will also use the Alaska rally to throw his weight behind Kelly Tshibaka, a Republican challenger to the incumbent senator Lisa Murkowski, who voted to convict the former president at his second impeachment trial following the January 6 insurrection. But there is little doubt that Palin will grab the headlines," before adding the former GOP campaign consultant Steve Schmidt -- who plucked Palin from out of obscurity to be the late Sen. John McCains running mate in his presidential bid -- is less than impressed with the partnership between the two headline-hogging former office holders.

Telling Smith, "It’s a rather tedious affair at this point," he added, "The fulminations of two deranged people are newsworthy only in the sense that there’s an open question around whether citizens of a democratic republic are potentially apathetic enough to allow such people a return to political power when their previous associations with it ended in such profound disgrace.”

You can read more here.

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5 22 no lnx twt

Steve Schmidt calls for 'venomous and dangerous' Rupert Murdoch to be stripped of US citizenship

Rupert Murdoch receiving the 2015 Global Leadership Award, Wikimedia Commons

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement May 18, 2022

Lincoln Project co-founder and former GOP strategist Steve Schmidt wants the United States to strip Rupert Murdoch of his U.S. citizenship, calling the 91-year-old Australian-born media titan “the most venomous and dangerous foreigner to ever arrive on American soil.”

Murdoch is the man behind News Corp, a massive multi-national conglomerate that in the U.S. owns Fox News, The New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, book publisher HarperCollins, and even realtor.com.

But it is Fox News that Schmidt is focused on.

“The January 6 Committee will prove a massive conspiracy,” Schmidt tweeted Tuesday night. “That conspiracy will likely involve @foxnews hosts and personalities. @rupertmurdoch is responsible for what happens on @foxnews, which has long claimed in Federal Court that is not news but entertainment.”

Taking a dig at Murdoch and the birther movement which Fox News amplified, Schmidt says Murdoch “is not a Birthright Citizen like @BarackObama. He is a Naturalized Citizen. Though it happens rarely, there is a Denaturalization process that can lead to revocation of US Citizenship and removal from the country.”

Murdoch became a U.S. citizen in 1985 so he could own American television stations.

“There are conditions and requirements for Denaturalization,” Schmidt continues. “This should be studied closely by Attorneys. I believe a strong case could be made that @rupertmurdoch, the most venomous and dangerous foreigner to ever arrive on American soil meets it easily.”

Schmidt in his final tweet tags former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who over the past few years has accused Murdoch and his media properties of undermining democracy in the U.S. and in Australia.

Last November Schmidt said Murdoch “has been a pancreatic cancer on democracy, pluralism and decency.”

And in February Schmidt suggested Fox News was an enemy of the U.S., calling it “an American Fifth Column that has declared war on American patriotism.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/wannabe-stormtroopers-white-men-with-guns-in-trumps-america-are-ing-the-sanctity-of-representative-democracy-and-our-american-system/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/the-lincoln-project-ads-are-working-trumps-re-election-campaign-has-been-utterly-derailed

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/21/us/2004-campaign-advertising-kerry-filing-complaint-against-swift-boat-group.html

THE 2004 CAMPAIGN: ADVERTISING; Kerry Is Filing a Complaint Against Swift Boat Group

By :{Jim Rutenberg:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;text-size-adjust:100%;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline-block;text-decoration-line:underline;text-decoration-color:#cccccc;"):}:

Aug. 21, 2004
-

Correction Appended

Stepping up a counteroffensive against a veterans group that is attacking his military record, the campaign of Senator John Kerry said on Friday that it was filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing the organization of violating campaign laws by coordinating its activities with the Bush campaign.

Mr. Bush's campaign has denied any connection to the group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, accused Mr. Kerry of ''losing his cool'' over the group's accusation that he lied to get his military decorations in Vietnam.

That comment prompted a sharp response from the Kerry campaign. ''Mr. McClellan needs to understand that John Kerry is not the type of leader who will sit and read 'My Pet Goat' to a group of second graders while America is under attack,'' said Stephanie Cutter, a campaign spokeswoman, referring to the president's actions on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

The exchange came on a day when the veterans group unveiled its second anti-Kerry advertisement, and demonstrated how the issue is monopolizing the presidential race.

The group, which received some of its initial financing from Republicans with ties to Mr. Bush and his family, is made up of veterans who served in Vietnam, but only one was on the river patrol boat that Mr. Kerry commanded. Many of their claims have been called into question .

''We hope the F.E.C. will shut down these ads that are run on behalf of the Bush campaign,'' said Michael Meehan, a Kerry spokesman. He said the campaign planned to file its complaint on Monday.

Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Mr. Bush, called the action frivolous and accused Mr. Kerry of his own violations involving Democratic-leaning groups like the Media Fund and America Coming Together, which have spent tens of millions of dollars to support Mr. Kerry and whose leaders have close ties with his campaign. The Bush campaign and the Republican Party have filed a complaint charging coordination between several groups and Mr. Kerry's campaign.

JohnO'Neill, a leader of the Swift boat group, said the planned complaint was an assault on the free-speech rights of veterans and former prisoners of war.

Though campaign finance laws allow advocacy groups to collect large contributions and run ads independently, they are not allowed to coordinate activities or fund-raising with the campaigns or parties.

The Kerry complaint will be the second against the Swift boat group. A group of organizations that work to limit money in politics filed one earlier this month. The Federal Election Commission often takes months to resolve enforcement actions.

The new commercial that the Swift boat group introduced on Friday features veterans who say that Mr. Kerry's antiwar statements in the early 1970's, when they were being held as prisoners of war by the Vietcong, aided their captors.

''John Kerry gave the enemy for free what I and many of my comrades in the North Vietnam prison camps took torture to avoid saying,'' says Paul Galanti, identified on screen as a prisoner of war from January 1966 to February, 1973.

Interspersed with their comments is Mr. Kerry's Senate testimony in 1971 recounting accusations of war crimes in Vietnam, involving soldiers who had ''raped, cut off ears,'' and ''razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.''

Mr. Kerry's campaign argued that he was relating accusations made by others and that he had since described some of his past remarks as excessive. But some Democrats said privately they feared that this ad would have even more impact than the last, whose charges have not been substantiated.

''It's not something that can be easily or successfully discredited,'' said one party strategist, who requested anonymity because he did not want to be seen as undermining Mr. Kerry's campaign. ''It's guys talking about how they felt and you can't discredit someone's description of his own feelings.''

The spot will not run until Tuesday, when the group said it would begin broadcasting it in three states.

The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, is running a spot that features General Merrill A. McPeak, who was the Air Force chief of staff during the war in the Persian Gulf in 1991 and who had previously been supportive of Mr. Bush.

''Four years ago, I endorsed George Bush for President, but this year I'm voting for John Kerry,'' Gen. McPeak says. ''Nothing is more important to me than protecting America. John Kerry has the strength and common sense we need in a commander in chief.''

http://swampland.time.com/2008/10/15/mccain_and_his_mad_men/

...Of all those bad tactical bets, though, none has been less appreciated or more disastrous than McCain’s post-primary decision to entrust his campaign to a handful of Bush operatives. These Karl Rove disciples, led by top strategist Steve Schmidt, were supposed to take out Obama in the same methodical way the Bush team eviscerated McCain in 2000 and John Kerry four years later. But, instead, they ended up swiftly swift-boating their own guy and the peerless reputation he spent a quarter of a century building, decimating in the process the campaign’s best asset–McCain himself. Talk about an honor killing.

Even worse, the Bushies traded integrity for incoherence as the McCain watchword. Indeed, this shotgun marriage never made sense stylistically or politically–and, ever since it was consummated, neither has the McCain campaign. It has careened chaotically from message to message, tactic to tactic, attack to attack.

...

new

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/a-shadow-digital-campaign-may-prove-decisive-in-2020-and-donald-trump-has-a-clear-advantage/

no lnx

A shadow digital campaign may prove decisive in 2020–and Donald Trump has a clear advantage

This article was paid for with reader donations to Alternet 2020.

written by Steven Schmidt July 11, 2019

Steven Schmidt was president of interactive digital at Aspen Marketing, now a division of Epsilon/Publicis.]

I think for the first time in history, the data operation ran everything from TV buying to where we were on the ground to all of the different operations. And so, having that data right there, we could start to where the persuadable targets are, [Get out the Vote], everything we needed to know.

Pennsylvania and Michigan… I started to see data and started to track it. We were making thousands of live calls, web tracking… and it was building and it’s building what’s called models and universes. What we can start to see is, ‘we’re in play in Pennsylvania’ and ‘in play in Michigan’. Let’s buy in these areas…. And by the Friday before the election, I had predicted that we were going to win 305 electoral results.”

-Trump Campaign Director Brad Parscale, interviewed on Fox News, November 16, 2016]

Marketing is big business in the U.S. and the Trump campaign is positioned to have the biggest digital marketing operation in history.

Today, with a reported database of 20 million active supporters, Brad Parscale, Trump’s campaign manager and digital guru, is confident. Parscale is predicting that the campaign will raise $1 billion, three times as much as they were able to raise in 2016, when Trump claimed to be self-financing his campaign and fundraising only became a coordinated Republican effort late in the game.

As Parscale explained on Fox News shortly after the election, his strategy began and ended “with the data.” The campaign decided to spend its limited resources in swing states late in the race, arguably pushing them over the top. Months later, Trump rewarded Parscale with the top job for 2020. The president, a self-described marketing genius, had found his own marketing genius in Parscale. And Parscale succeeded personally beyond his wildest dream when he took his little marketing company and hitched it to Trump.

Digital marketing has become ubiquitous in Americans’ lives as the age of Madison Avenue relying on TV and print advertising has given way to smarter, more narrowly targeted internet campaigns. Republicans appear to understand this shift well while Democrats have yet to show that they really ‘grock‘ how digital marketing targets and delivers messages to targeted audiences.

Reaching, Acquiring, Engaging and Converting Voters

Hillary Clinton’s team made 66 thousand visual ads. My team made 5.9 million ads. Those are ads targeted directly to people the way they want to consume them. I stopped looking at people as demographics, groups, personas. I said: let’s look at people as individuals, how do they act. Because two people who look the same, might act differently.

– Brad Parscale on ‘Micro-targeting’

As a former president of one of the largest marketing services companies in America, I can tell you that the Democratic party is far behind the curve. While the Democrats continue to rely heavily on old-school techniques of grassroots organizing, union get-out-the-vote drives and appealing to people with ad hoc causes, the Republican playbook has leaped ahead.

Today’s political battles are fought largely through interactive social media. Digital life has become almost indistinguishable from real life, especially for those who grew up with the internet. Every move we make in this world creates valuable data waiting to be harvested. Personal patterns emerge. Political beliefs are packed into your profile. All of this allows marketers like Parscale to finely tune their pitches for specific groups of voters.

When your angry old uncle or MAGA-loving grandpa attends a Trump rally or answers a text message, their contact information is being harvested for Parscale’s sprawling database. When they surf the web, visit popular conservative news sites or click on trending topics about hot button issues for the right, their personal data are, thanks to lax privacy standards across the industry, sifted, sorted and grouped into preferences for targeting.

This is the world of psychographics–a qualitative approach to defining consumers psychological attributes. Psychographic profiles –measures of an individual’s activities, interests and opinions, or AIO variables in industry-speak–were once used to sell sneakers and deodorants but have now become a potent tool for voter outreach and persuasion.

This is marketing 101 and the Democrats are only beginning to get into this high stakes game. Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean has been given the task, as of early 2019, to launch a new voter database. Dean called it “a big breakthrough” that will aim to compete with what the Republicans have spent years putting in place. “I’d sort of given up that we could get it done,” Dean told the Associated Press.

The Guru

Brad Parscale is a six foot, eight inch balding libertarian out of Topeka, Kansas via San Antonio, Texas. Before becoming Trump’s digital 2016 campaign director, he was a hungry young businessman and digital marketing whiz. When the opportunity of his life sat down next to him on a flight to New York in the person of Eric Trump, Parscale jumped on the opportunity to move up.

In early 2015, Donald Trump asked Parscale if his firm, Giles-Parscale, could build a website for $1500. When Trump launched his campaign in June 2015, he paid Parscale $10,000 to build out of his campaign’s site.

“I just made up a price,” Parscale later told The Washington Post. He promised Eric Trump that the money would be refundable if the work proved unsatisfactory.

Parscale realized that there was some real upside potential here. Trump, a tall man, had to look up to talk to Parscale, which seemed to impress him. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, soon asked him what he could do with Facebook and its marketing platform. Parscale Strategy, a spinoff of Giles-Parscale, kicked into high gear on the Facebook front.

Facebook: A Game-Changer

Earlier this year, during a talk to a Romanian audience titled, “Let’s Make Political Marketing Great Again,” Parscale hinted at how he plans to leverage his experience from 2016 to run a billion-dollar campaign during the 2020 cycle.

Forbes reported that:

The Trump team gained access to the Republican National Committee’s Data Trust, a collection of more than 200 million voter files gathered through a massive operation begun in the wake of Romney’s 2012 Presidential defeat. It was like a “Christmas present”, Parscale remembers. The team now had a way to “know what Americans think”. But Parscale and his team still needed an efficient way to target them. “And this other Christmas present showed up: these guys from Facebook walked to my office and said: ‘we have a beta … it’s a new onboarding tool … you can onboard audiences straight into Facebook and we will match them to their Facebook accounts’.”

Parscale’s strategy aligned perfectly with Facebook’s algorithms, importing lists of supporters gleaned from Trump rallies and those ubiquitous on-line ads. In his world, data–voters’ contact info–was gold.In 2016, Cambridge Analytica mined millions of users’ Facebook data after acquiring them from a researcher who told the social media giant that he would use it exclusively for academic purposes.

The Associated Press reported last year that Data Propria, “a company run by former officials at Cambridge Analytica,” has “quietly been working for President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election effort.” But Parscale’s operation no longer relies on such vendors. It has become a multi-platform, multi-app shop utilizing direct, one-to-one communications, interactive messaging, mobile content and live events. In 2020, one might call this database-coordinated marketing campaign the ‘Secret Sauce 2.0’.

Some of Parscale’s techniques are proprietary, but others are simply industry best practices. “I always wonder why people in politics act like this stuff is so mystical,” Parscale told reporters in 2016. “It’s the same shit we use in commercial, just has fancier names.”

While the Republicans romped online, the Democrats stalled out in 2016. Hillary Clinton’s email travails became the ‘whatabout’ attack line of the campaign. Unfortunately for the Democratic Party,Hillary and Bill had an aversion to hiring Obama’s successful digital team and brought in their own consultants–young, inexperienced, and lacking a firm grasp of important security practices. An email server was set up in a closet. It would later be breached. The results were disastrous.

The Coming Onslaught…

What we need to do is create technology, an app on your phone [that] will help execute any type of volunteer programs… once we have data back. The volunteer app would be powered by and fed into the campaign’s data-gathering operation through the use of alarge scale machine learning system. So, when knocking on a door, the team already knows what issues the person cares about, and the takeaways from their discussion will help improve the campaign’s advertising program.

—Parscale on ‘Individual ad targeting’

Opposition research on whomever emerges from the Democratic primary are yet to come, but it is already clear that the party is not prepared to fight back with its own state-of-the-art political marketing apparatus.

Parscale revealed to the Palm Beach Post that in 2016, he created as many as 100,000 ads a day, testing different images, colors and wording to see which were the most effective for particular voters.“We will continue to make content that is tailored for you and the message you need to hear from the president,” he said, promising that during the course of the campaign, millions of personalized messages from the president will be arriving daily on cell phones, in emails, and via news feeds.

This time around, Parscale’s systems are mostly ready to go at this very early date. They’ve been engineered and tested. His team will use various performance metrics to track their successes, optimize their programs as they go, and maximize their spending clout.

They’re running their plan right now.

Via the Palm Beach Post:

At a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on March 28, Parscale walked onto the stage, raised his cell phone above his head and asked the audience to pull out their phones and text TRUMP to 88022. In a video clip of the rally, Trump supporters behind Parscale can be seen taking their phones out and texting.

“The power of bringing our party together is in that phone,” Parscale told the crowd in Miami. Recently, the campaign has been relentlessly texting supporters, asking them to sign a digital birthday card for the president. However, signing requires turning over your contact information and cell phone number.

“The whole game will be different” in 2020,said Parscale. Back in 2016, “the most people [the Republican National Committee] could contact to show up [to vote] without using television, advertising or some kind of mass media was 2 million people.” By 2020, “we’re gonna have 50-60 million… that’s a gigantic advantage, because the Democrats can’t do that.” Parscale expects to have a least 50 million personalized direct voter contacts in their database (62 million voted for Trump in 2016).“We will have a formidable ground game, one volunteer for every 13 swing voters, and a data operation that cannot be replicated,” Parscale told Face the Nation earlier this year.

According to The New York Times, in the first five months of this year, the Trump campaign had already pumped $4.9 million into Facebook ads, triple the figure of Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate who spent the most.

But swing voters aren’t the only ones being targeted by the Trump campaign. The numbers from 2016 tell us those who stayed home in 2016–40 percent of eligible voters–represent a huge untapped source of votes for Parscale and his team to win over.

Those non-voters are being identified and targeted right now by the GOP’s marketing operations. Their data are being mined and put into Parscale’s databases in preparation for the next phase of the campaign. They will be flattered, told of Trump’s many awe-inspiring achievements and repeatedly warned about the horrors that will occur should Democrats get back in power.

It was recently revealed that part of Team Trump’s Facebook strategy to convert users into supporters is a series of targeted ads depicting members of various demographic groups that tend not to be supportive of Trump—among them bearded hipsters, young women and people of color–gushing over how great he is. These testimonials by “real Americans,” it turns out, are not only stock photos but some of them are Turkish stock photos.

Already, those in the database–core Republican voters, persuadables, and non-voters–are getting messages from the campaign. They’re being told to believe in America, keep the economy growing, protect their pocketbook, protect their family and protect the nation.

Brad Parscale is on his way, as he says, to make “political marketing great.” The database politics of the future is here now. Dems need to catch up.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/magical-thinking-trump-cult-former-gop-strategist-singles-out-core-truth-deluded

Former Republican campaign strategist Steve Schmidt called President Donald Trump's supporters a "cult" during a Tuesday MSNBC appearance.

Schmidt said Trump has convinced people he has a popular mandate that doesn't actually exist.

"He has performed some level of Jedi mind trick. Here's the deal — he lost by 3 million votes [...] He is weaker," Schmidt said. "The majority of the country opposes this. It is only through the magical thinking of the Trump cult that there is any capacity to believe that a majority supports it. It does not." Then Schmidt offered advice for the Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.

"What Democrats have to talk about is the vast corruption of this administration, the personal corruption of Donald Trump and the people around him, the kind of moral corruption, and the fact that the Republicans in Congress will do nothing to slow him down."

Watch the clip below.

no lnx

Thursday night, conservative legal operative Ed Whelan sent a series of tweets suggesting that the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh were likely a case of mistaken identity. His evidence was that a high school classmate of Kavanaugh’s kind of looked like him, and lived in a childhood home that sounded similar to the home where Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, described the assault taking place.

This thin evidence was quickly torn apart. Political observers from across the aisle blasted Whelan for posting the classmate’s name and photograph and strongly implying, without evidence, that he committed sexual assault. It turns out the classmate, a middle school teacher whose name I don’t want to disseminate, was someone Ford knew; she told the Washington Post that “there is zero chance that I would confuse them.”

By Friday morning, the backlash was so overwhelming that Whelan, who is currently president of the conservative Ethics & Public Policy Center, deleted his entire tweetstorm and apologized

Ed Whelan

@EdWhelan123

I made an appalling and inexcusable mistake of judgment in posting the tweet thread in a way that identified Kavanaugh's Georgetown Prep classmate. I take full responsibility for that mistake, and I deeply apologize for it. I realize that does not undo the mistake.

5:38 AM - Sep 21, 2018

9,194

19.9K people are talking about this

This isn’t a case of a fringe conspiracy theory. Whelan is a well-connected guy in Republican legal circles with a long history of working on judicial nominations. He’s also a good friend of Kavanaugh’s and had reportedly been involved in the effort to get him confirmed. When you put these things together, it raises serious questions as to whether anyone in the White House or Congress knew about or helped coordinate the potentially libelous tweetstorm. It’s even possible that Kavanaugh himself was involved.

Whelan denied any communication with Kavanaugh or the White House about the theory — but, notably, did not mention anyone in Congress. There’s at least some circumstantial evidence that Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah who has supported Kavanaugh throughout the Ford saga, was looped in.

The tweetstorm was a clear attempt to defend Kavanaugh without engaging in the ugly business of calling Ford a liar. The problem, though, is that it ended up strongly suggesting that an uninvolved private citizen was a sex offender — hurting his reputation and dragging him into the spotlight without any good reason. This is in and of itself scandalous, and creates another controversy the Kavanaugh nomination can ill afford.

“The emerging consensus, which I think is right, seems to be that Ed Whelan has made things noticeably worse for [Kavanaugh],” writes Ken White, an attorney who runs the legal blog Popehat. “What a colossal failure of judgment.”

But even if this doesn’t give Republicans pause about continuing with Kavanaugh’s nomination, it’s something that ought to be investigated further.

If Kavanaugh was in any way involved in Whelan’s tweets, then it’s a serious mark against his judgment and character. People who want to serve on the nation’s highest court should not be willing to casually drag a private citizen through the mud, using dubiously legal tactics, to advance their own goals. The same goes for other people in public office, be they Senate Republicans or White House officials.

The case for investigating Whelan’s allegations

Almost immediately after the tweetstorm broke, connected observers began speculating about where Whelan’s theory came from and if he was working alone. Steve Schmidt, a longtime Republican strategist who worked on President George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominations, was probably the most informed of these speculators

Steve Schmidt

@SteveSchmidtSES

People drown because they panic, not because they can’t swim. The Whelan email is symptomatic of the utter panic consuming a nomination that hangs by the thinnest of threads and the looming spectacle of out of touch octogenarians like Orin Hatch interrogating Dr. Ford.

9:35 PM - Sep 20, 2018

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9,582 people are talking about this

Steve Schmidt

@SteveSchmidtSES

Replying to @SteveSchmidtSES

When I ran the Roberts and Alito confirmations Ed Whalen was the singularly most important and effective outside advisor involved in the confirmation effort. He knew every detail when it came to our strategy and everything he did was closely coordinated with the WH effort.

9:35 PM - Sep 20, 2018

3,762

1,342 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Steve Schmidt

@SteveSchmidtSES

Replying to @SteveSchmidtSES

He is a brilliant, meticulous and serious lawyer. He is not a conspiracy nut. It is inconceivable to me that Whelan published that email without discussions, debate and assistance from the WH and GOP Senators and staff. It is not the isolated musings of one man but rather part

9:35 PM - Sep 20, 2018

5,499

1,963 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Steve Schmidt

@SteveSchmidtSES

Replying to @SteveSchmidtSES

Of a broader discreditation strategy. No one should presume that Kavanaugh had any knowledge of the premeditated strategy being executed on his behalf. However, if he did, it utterly and irrevocably disqualifies him as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. I hope

9:35 PM - Sep 20, 2018

9,061

2,424 people are talking about this

There’s some evidence in the public domain backing up Schmidt’s speculation. On Tuesday, we learned that Kavanaugh had met privately with Hatch, who serves on the Judiciary Committee, and told him the accusations could be a case of mistaken identity. Whelan amplified this defense on his Twitter feed. On Wednesday, Hatch’s spokesperson, Matt Whitlock, retweeted another Whelan tweet promoting a mistaken identity theory, telling people to “keep an eye on Ed’s tweets the next few days.” (After Whelan’s thread came out, Whitlock deleted the tweet and denied having any foreknowledge of what Whelan was planning.)

Then on Thursday evening, the Washington Post reported that the “mistaken identity” argument was a central plank of the planned Kavanaugh defense against the Ford allegations. It’s not clear in the story whether the plan was to simply say it was someone else, or to point the finger at a specific person as Whelan did:

Kavanaugh and his allies have been privately discussing a defense that would not question whether an incident involving Ford happened, but instead would raise doubts that the attacker was Kavanaugh, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

“I find this alarming,” tweeted Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz, pointing to the above paragraph in the Washington Post story.

Whelan denied any collusion with Kavanaugh, as reported by the Washington Post’s Robert Costa

Robert Costa

@costareports

"I have not communicated at all with Don McGahn or anyone at the White House, or Judge Kavanaugh, about the topic of the Twitter thread," @EdWhelanEPPC tells me just now, in a brief phone interview.

Whelan declined to answer further questions.

3. Steve Schmidt

Steve Schmidt, who served as a senior strategist for Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, was a registered Republican for 29 years. But the 47-year-old Schmidt became so fed up with Trumpism that on June 19, he announced, via Twitter, that he was officially leaving the GOP and registering as an independent. Disgusted because establishment Republicans who were willing to stand up to Trump were few and far between, Schmidt denounced the Republican leadership as “feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party’s greatest leaders.”

https://www.alternet.org/mccain-campaign-manager-steve-schmidt-leaves-party-trump-gop-has-become-danger-our-democracy

wow, it really is him on trms:

Steve Schmidt is a senior Republican Strategist. As John McCain’s Campaign Strategist in 2008 he was the guy principally responsible for selecting Sarah Palin as McCain’s VP nominee. Two nights ago he appeared on the Rachel Maddow show and told her that selecting Palin was a “failure” of the VP vetting process based on the criterion that the VP must be qualified to become president.

Steve Schmidt has joined Edelman as Vice Chairman, Public Affairs, the agency said today. Schmidt was most recently a partner at Mercury Public Affairs, leading the firm’s operations in California.

He was also a key source for the best-selling book Game Change, which revealed behind the scenes information in regards to the 2008 U.S. presidential election. The above video is from Schmidt’s January 10th, 2010 appearance on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” where he spoke about the McCain presidential campaign, and their decision to add Sarah Palin to the ticket.

Schmidt served as senior advisor to John McCain‘s 2008 presidential campaign; campaign manager for the 2006 re-election of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger; and was deputy assistant to the President and Counsellor to the Vice President in the White House, where he played leading roles on the confirmation teams for the nominations of both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. In addition, he was a member of the senior strategic planning group that directed Former President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.

Edelman says their U.S. Public Affairs practice has revenues of $60 million with a team of 170 serving clients including API, Business Roundtable, Monsanto, Oregon Bridge Delivery Partners, and Pfizer.

===

scrape

Steve Schmidt –

ROVE – COLL REPUBLICANS

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Steve Schmidt (born 1970) is an American campaign strategist and public relations worker for the U.S. Republican Party. He specializes in political "message development and strategy".[1] Schmidt was the senior campaign strategist and advisor to the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator John McCain.[2]

Contents

[hide]

1 Early life and education

2 Career

2.1 Early campaigns

2.2 Washington, D.C.

2.3 California

2.4 2008 McCain presidential campaign

2.4.1 Press commentary

2.4.2 Stance on gay rights

2.5 Sarah Palin "catastrophic" comment

3 References

4 External links

[edit] Early life and education

Schmidt's father was a business executive with Verizon; his mother was a teacher.[3] He grew up in North Plainfield, New Jersey, and was an Eagle Scout, a tight end on the high school football team,[4] a two-year member of the National Honor Society, and senior class vice president. In 1988, he was one of two graduating seniors voted "most likely to succeed" by his classmates at North Plainfield High School.[5] He first handed out campaign materials for Democrat Bill Bradley's 1978 Senate campaign.[6]

Schmidt attended the University of Delaware from 1988 through the spring of 1993, majoring in political science.[3] He left three credits short of graduating because he couldn't pass a math course; Schmidt has said that he has been diagnosed with a learning disability that makes higher math difficult for him.[4] He joined the Delta Tau Delta fraternity,[5] was a member of the campus Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program, and did field work for Republican candidates in Delaware, sometimes wearing campaign buttons to class.[3]

[edit] Career

[edit] Early campaigns

In 1995, Steve Schmidt managed Will T. Scott's unsuccessful campaign for attorney general of Kentucky (Scott is now Deputy Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Kentucky). This Kentucky campaign's advertising strategy was featured in the second edition of George Magazine, published by John F. Kennedy, Jr. Later, in 1998, Schmidt ran Tim Leslie's unsuccessful race for lieutenant governor of California.[7] That year he was also the Communications Director for the unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of Matt Fong.[8] In 1999, he was the communications director for Lamar Alexander's presidential run, leaving in June when the campaign reduced its senior staff.[9]

[edit] Washington, D.C.

By late 2000, Schmidt was communications director of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.[10][11] In 2001, he was the spokesman of the National Republican Congressional Committee,[12] becoming the Communications Director by 2002. He left the NRCC in early 2003 to work for the lobbying firm Direct Impact Company.[13]

Schmidt joined the Bush administration as a Deputy Assistant to the President and Counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney. In 2004, he was a member of the senior strategic planning group, led by White House adviser Karl Rove, that ran President George W. Bush's re-election campaign; Schmidt oversaw the reelection "war room".[7] In 2005 and 2006, he was the White House strategist in charge of the U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Samuel A. Alito[14] and Chief Justice John Roberts.[7]

[edit] California

In 2006, Schmidt left the White House to become the campaign manager in the re-election campaign for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.[14] From there, he became a partner in Mercury Public Affairs, part of Fleishman-Hillard International Communications, in charge of Mercury's operations in California.[15]

[edit] 2008 McCain presidential campaign

See also: John McCain presidential campaign, 2008

On July 2, 2008, Schmidt was appointed to head up day to day operations of the McCain campaign in response to concerns that the campaign lacked coordination and a clear message. Rick Davis retained the formal title of "campaign manager".[16][17]

[edit] Press commentary

The New York Times described Schmidt's management as having transformed the McCain campaign into an "an elbows-out, risk-taking, disciplined machine," crediting him with aggressive responses to press criticism and creative methods of manipulating the news cycle.[18]

Time's Michael Scherer, in an opinion piece from September 15, 2008 relating to Schmidt's involvement with John McCain's presidential campaign stated that Schmidt, the "lord of outrage, has a long and prosperous career ahead of him."[19]

[edit] Stance on gay rights

Schmidt voiced his support for gay rights at meeting of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay Republican group. Schmidt, when referring to the group, said "I just wanted to take a second to come by and pay my respect and the campaign's respect to your organization and to your group. Your organization is an important one in the fabric of our party." [20]

Schmidt referred in positive terms to his lesbian sister and her life partner:

“

On a personal level, my sister and her partner are an important part of my life and our children's life. I admire your group and your organization and I encourage you to keep fighting for what you believe in because the day is going to come.[20]

”

[edit] Sarah Palin "catastrophic" comment

In a CNN interview with John King, when asked about the debut of Sarah Palin's upcoming book release, he stated

"... I think she has many talents ... but my honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate for the Republican Party in 2012 and, in fact, were she the nominee, we could have a catastrophic election result.[21]"

The comments have received considerable media coverage.

[edit] References

^ Chris Cillizza (December 20, 2006). "McCain Hires Another Bush Insider". Washington Post. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2006/12/mccain_hires_another_bushie.html.

^ Halloran, Liz (1 August 2008). "Republicans Press Celebrity Attack on Obama". US News and World Report. http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/campaign-2008/2008/08/01/republicans-press-celebrity-attack-on-obama.html. Retrieved 2008-08-08.

^ a b c Chris Barrish (September 15, 2008). "Another kingmaker has links to Delaware: McCain strategist was a student at UD". The News Journal. http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080915/NEWS02/809150337.

^ a b Lois Romano (August 21, 2008). "The Silver Bullet: Steve Schmidt Makes Sure His Candidate Knows Exactly What He Is Shooting For". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/20/AR2008082003960_pf.html.

^ a b "University of Delaware Delt plays pivotal role on McCain campaign staff". Home News Tribune and the Courier News. September 7, 2008. http://www.mycentraljersey.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080907/NEWS/809070313/1098/POLITICS.

^ Marinucci, Carla (February 12, 2006). "Governor's team adds former Rove protege: Political 'artillery shell' joins re-election effort". San Francisco Chronicle.

^ a b c Dan Morain and Bob Drogin (October 6, 2008). "Steve Schmidt: The driving force behind John McCain". Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-schmidt6-2008oct06,0,7177006,full.story.

^ Chris Cillizza (September 7, 2008). "Sunday Reading: Steve Schmidt Examined". Washington Post. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/09/sunday_reading_steve_schmidt_e.html.

^ David Firestone (June 4, 1999). "Alexander Cuts Staff And Travel". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D03E3DD1639F937A35755C0A96F958260.

^ "Steve Schmidt biography". July 4, 2008. http://rncnyc2004.blogspot.com/2008/07/steve-schmidt-biography.html. Retrieved 2008-10-08.

^ Steve Lilienthal (November 27, 2000). "Republican congressional exec quits for private work". PR Week USA. http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/113798/.

^ Philip Shenon (March 29, 2001). "While Senate Debates, It's Fund-Raising as Usual". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E07E5D9173FF93AA15750C0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all.

^ "National Republican Congressional Committee - People & Organizations: Party Lines". Campaigns & Elections magazine. May 2003. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2519/is_5_24/ai_102660514.

^ a b Marinucci, Carla (February 12, 2006). "Governor's team adds former Rove protege". San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/12/BAGTNH78UU1.DTL.

^ Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen (July 3, 2008 url=http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=E5FAF286-3048-5C12-0066483BBF8FB520). "A dose of discipline for McCain's campaign". The Politico.

^ Dan Balz and Michael D. Shear (2008-07-02). ""McCain Puts New Strategist Atop Campaign"". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/02/AR2008070203038.html. Retrieved 2008-07-02.

^ Martin, Jonathan (2008-07-02). "Schmidt takes control of day-to-day operation". Politico.com. http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0708/Schmidt_takes_control_of_daytoday_operation.html. Retrieved 2008-09-07.

^ Rutenberg, Jim; Adam Nagourney (2008-09-06). "An Adviser Molds a Tighter, More Aggressive McCain Campaign". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/us/politics/07schmidt.html. Retrieved 2008-09-17.

^ Scherer, Michael (September 15, 2008). "McCain's Outraged and Outrageous Campaign". Time.com. http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1841131,00.html. Retrieved 2008-09-16.

^ a b Eleveld, Kerry (September 4, 2008). "McCain's Top Strategist Addresses Log Cabin Republicans". advocate.com. http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid60725.asp. Retrieved 2008-09-29.

^ http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/10/02/mccain-manager-predicts-palin-could-prove-catastrophic/

[edit] External links

Bio at Mercury Public Affairs

McCain Orders Shake-Up of His Campaign, New York Times, July 3, 2008

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt"

Steve Schmidt

Gender: Male

Other Muckety maps showing Steve Schmidt:

Dick Cheney in support of gay marriage

George W. Bush signs on with Speakers Bureau

Steve Schmidt personal relations:

Matthew S. David - protege

Danny Diaz - protege

Brian Jones - protege

Katie Levinson - protege

Kevin Madden - protege

Matthew McDonald - protege

Angela Schmidt - spouse

Other current Steve Schmidt relationships:

Mercury Public Affairs - partner

Steve Schmidt past relationships:

1998 Matt Fong Senate campaign - communications director

2000 Lamar Alexander presidential campaign - communications director

2004 George W. Bush presidential campaign - media strategist

2006 Arnold Schwarzenegger (CA) gubernatorial campaign - campaign manager

2008 John McCain presidential campaign - senior adviser

George W. Bush - deputy assistant to the president

Richard B. Cheney - counselor

Karl Rove's breakfast club - participant

National Republican Congressional Committee - communications director

Republican National Congressional Campaign Committee - spokesman

Steve Schmidt connections, once removed:

Steve Schmidt is connected to ...

Freedom's Watch >> through Matthew S. David >> Map it!

Republican National Committee >> through Danny Diaz >> Map it!

Thomas Doherty >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

Kirill Goncharenko >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

Brian Jones >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

John Lonergan >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

Kieran Mahoney >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

Michael McKeon >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

Adam Mendelsohn >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

Terry Nelson >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

Greg Strimple >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

Fleishman-Hillard Inc. >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

Food Allergy Project >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

Heart Rhythm Society >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

Imation Corporation >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

InsCap Management LLC >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

Land O'Lakes >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

National Children's Museum >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

RSM McGladrey, Inc. >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

SBM Enterprises >> through Mercury Public Affairs >> Map it!

Other Muckety maps showing Karl Rove's breakfast club:

Karl Rove to be interviewed in U.S. attorney firings probe

Karl Rove's breakfast club past relationships:

Dan Bartlett - participant

Kenneth B. Mehlman - participant

Karl Rove - host

Steve Schmidt - participant

Nicolle Devenish Wallace - participant

Emil jones hired by mercury PR –

terry nelson and steve schmidt –

crosslink – omnicom – fleishman hilliard

wiki

Steve Schmidt (born 1970) is an American campaign strategist and public relations worker for theU.S.Republican Party. He specializes in political "message development and strategy."^[1] Schmidt was the senior campaign strategist and advisor to the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator**John McCai**n.^[2] He is currently a political analyst for msnbc and also appears frequently on Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO.

Contents

[hide]

Early life and education

Schmidt, who is of German Jewish descent,^[citation ^needed] son of a school teacher and a businessman, grew up in North Plainfield, New Jersey, was anEagle Scout, a tight end on the high school football team,^[3] a two-year member of the National Honor Society, and senior class vice president. In 1988, he was one of two graduating seniors voted "most likely to succeed" by his classmates at North Plainfield High School.^[4] He first handed out campaign materials for Democrat**Bill Bradley**'s 1978 Senate campaign.^[5]

Schmidt attended the University of Delaware from 1988 through the spring of 1993, majoring in political science.^[6] He left three credits short of graduating because he did not pass a math course; Schmidt has said that he has been diagnosed with a learning disability that makes higher math difficult for him.^[3]He joined the Delta Tau Delta fraternity,^[4] was a member of the campus Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program, and did field work for Republican candidates in Delaware, sometimes wearing campaign buttons to class.^[6]

Career

Early campaigns

In 1995, Steve Schmidt managed the unsuccessful campaign for Kentucky Attorney General of Will T. Scott,who is now a Justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court.^[7] This Kentucky campaign's advertising strategy was featured in the second edition of George Magazine. In 1998, Schmidt ran California State Senator Tim Leslie's unsuccessful race for Lt. Governor of California.^[8] Also that year, he was the Communications Director for California State Treasurer Matt Fong's unsuccessful campaign to unseat U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer.^[9] In 1999, he was the Communications Director forLamar Alexander's presidential run, leaving in June when the campaign reduced its senior staff.^[10]

Washington, D.C.

By late 2000, Schmidt was communications director of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.^[11][12]

In 2001, he was the spokesman of the National Republican Congressional Committee,^[13] becoming the Communications Director by 2002. He left the NRCC in early 2003 to work for the lobbying firm Direct Impact Company.^[14]

Schmidt joined the Bush administration as a Deputy Assistant to the President and Counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney. In 2004, he was a member of the senior strategic planning group, led by White House adviser Karl Rove, that ran President George W. Bush's re-election campaign; Schmidt oversaw the reelection "war room".^[8] In 2005 and 2006, he was the White House strategist responsible for the U.S. Supreme Court nominations ofSamuel Alito^[15]and Chief Justice John Roberts.^[8]

California

In 2006, Schmidt left the White House to become the campaign manager in the re-election campaign for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.^[15]From there, he became a partner inMercury Public Affairs, part of Fleishman-Hillard International Communications, in charge of Mercury's operations inCalifornia.^[16]

2008 McCain presidential campaign

Press commentary

The New York Times described Schmidt's management as having transformed the McCain campaign into "an elbows-out, risk-taking, disciplined machine," crediting him with aggressive responses to press criticism and creative methods of manipulating the news cycle.^[19]

*Time*'s Michael Scherer, in an opinion piece from September 15, 2008 relating to Schmidt's involvement with John McCain's presidential campaign stated that Schmidt, the "lord of outrage, has a long and prosperous career ahead of him."^[20]

Stance on gay rights

Schmidt voiced his support for gay rights at meeting of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay Republican group. He said: "I just wanted to take a second to come by and pay my respect and the campaign's respect to your organization and to your group. Your organization is an important one in the fabric of our party." ^[21]

Schmidt said about his lesbian sister and her life partner: "On a personal level, my sister and her partner are an important part of my life and our children's life. I admire your group and your organization and I encourage you to keep fighting for what you believe in because the day is going to come."^[21]

In February 2013, Schmidt along with 74 other Republicans co-signed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in support of overturningProposition 8. “The die is cast on this issue when you look at the percentage of younger voters who support gay marriage,” he was quoted as saying. “AsDick Cheney said years ago, ‘Freedom means freedom for everybody.’ ”^[22]

Game Change

Schmidt is played by Woody Harrelson in the HBO film Game Change. The film, based on chapters of the book of the same title by political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, focuses on the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate in the 2008 United States presidential election. Schmidt is portrayed as initially pushing for the choice of Palin, before later thinking she was unqualified for the job and had limited knowledge of current affairs.^[23] The real Schmidt voiced his approval of the film, saying that "it tells the truth of the campaign"^[24] and that watching the film was tantamount to "an out-of-body experience."^[25]

References

^ Cillizza, Chris (20 December 2006). "McCain Hires Another Bush Insider". The Fix. The Washington Post. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
^ Halloran, Liz (1 August 2008). "Republicans Press Celebrity Attack on Obama". US News and World Report. Retrieved 2008-08-08.
^ ^a(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt#cite_ref-WP-21Aug08_3-0) ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt#cite_ref-WP-21Aug08_3-1) Romano, Lois (21 August 2008). "The Silver Bullet: Steve Schmidt Makes Sure His Candidate Knows Exactly What He Is Shooting For". The Washington Post.
^ ^a(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt#cite_ref-DTD_4-0) ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt#cite_ref-DTD_4-1) "University of Delaware Delt plays pivotal role on McCain campaign staff". Home News Tribune and the Courier News. September 7, 2008.
^ Marinucci, Carla (February 12, 2006). "Governor's team adds former Rove protege:Political 'artillery shell' joins re-election effort". San Francisco Chronicle.
^ ^a(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt#cite_ref-NJ-15Sep08_6-0) ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt#cite_ref-NJ-15Sep08_6-1) Barrish, Chris (September 15, 2008). "Another kingmaker has links to Delaware: McCain strategist was a student at UD". The News Journal.
^ Justice Will T. Scott, Kentucky Court of Justice
^ ^a(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt#cite_ref-LAT-6Oct08_8-0) ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt#cite_ref-LAT-6Oct08_8-1) ^c(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt#cite_ref-LAT-6Oct08_8-2) Dan Morain and Bob Drogin (October 6, 2008). "Steve Schmidt: The driving force behind John McCain". Los Angeles Times.
^ Cillizza, Chris (7 September 2008). "Sunday Reading: Steve Schmidt Examined". Washington Post.
^ Firestone, David (4 June 1999). "Alexander Cuts Staff And Travel". New York Times.
^ "Steve Schmidt biography". July 4, 2008. Retrieved 2008-10-08.
^ Lilienthal, Steve (November 27, 2000). "Republican congressional exec quits for private work". PR Week USA.
^ Philip Shenon (March 29, 2001). "While Senate Debates, It's Fund-Raising as Usual". New York Times.
^ "National Republican Congressional Committee - People & Organizations: Party Lines". Campaigns & Elections magazine. May 2003.^[dead ^link]
^ ^a(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt#cite_ref-Marinucci_15-0) ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt#cite_ref-Marinucci_15-1) Marinucci, Carla (February 12, 2006). "Governor's team adds former Rove protege". San Francisco Chronicle.
^ Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen (July 3, 2008). "A dose of discipline for McCain's campaign". The Politico.
^ Dan Balz and Michael D. Shear (2008-07-02). "McCain Puts New Strategist Atop Campaign". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-07-02.
^ Martin, Jonathan (2008-07-02). "Schmidt takes control of day-to-day operation". Politico.com. Retrieved 2008-09-07.
^ Rutenberg, Jim; Adam Nagourney (2008-09-06). "An Adviser Molds a Tighter, More Aggressive McCain Campaign". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-09-17.
^ Scherer, Michael (September 15, 2008). "McCain's Outraged and Outrageous Campaign". Time.com. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
^ ^a(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt#cite_ref-Advocate1_21-0) ^b(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schmidt#cite_ref-Advocate1_21-1) Eleveld, Kerry (September 4, 2008). "McCain's Top Strategist Addresses Log Cabin Republicans". advocate.com. Retrieved 2008-09-29.
^ Stolberg, Sheryl Gay (February 25, 2013). "Republicans Sign Brief in Support of Gay Marriage". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2012-02-26.
^ Dunn, Geoffrey (March 7, 2012). "Game Change: Sarah Palin and the Confessions of Steve Schmidt". Huffington Post. Retrieved March 9, 2012.
^ Rainey, James (February 18, 2012). "Choosing sides on Sarah Palin".Los Angeles Times.
^ David Frum: HBO's 'Game Change' Charts Sarah Palin's Revenge - The Daily Beast

External links

Nagourney, Adam (July 3, 2008). "McCain Orders Shake-Up of His Campaign". The New York Times.

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