http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10497.html

McCain wouldn't be here without the sincere support of those lobbyists he is now purging.

So essentially, what they're saying is: "We bought our place in this administration and thus the right to be present for and potentially sway political decisions that may be damaging to our business interests, and now we're being shut out! We paid good money to get an inside ear on the economic policies of this future president, and... now... well... *splutter* it's just not fair!!"

I'm confused as to what these lobbyists thought their "donations" actually bought them. If nothing else, this has just proven how right Obama was to refuse lobbyist donations in the first place.

The difference being, McCain wouldn't be here without these dudes. I'm not sure what is worse, backstabbing lobbyists or lobbyists themselves.

I actually respect him more for doing what he's done. While it's true that he may not have been where he is without those dudes, those dudes were essentially just donating funds, not buying a share in his presidency. He's not obliged to let them be involved in any way with his campaign, and he never was - outside of a "we'll rub your back if you rub ours" handshake deal, which is politically abhorrent on so many levels, regardless of whether it's accepted as the "norm" or not.

I'm surprised they've even brought this out into the open to be honest. It makes them look like whiney, petulant kids who thought they'd won their teacher over with apples and platitudes, only to get an F on their shoddy term paper regardless.

Of course, the cynical part of me leaps to the conclusion that blocking them out was a conscious decision on McCain's part to appear Obama-esque on lobbyists, and that this backwards article was written with the sole intent to get people like me to respect McCain for his ability to poo-poo big business investors with their own agendas. Which, let's face it, it undoubtedly was.

Chalk another one up for Obama, I guess. Keep making everyone else play catch up.

Snrub, while I agree with you to some extent, I think the fact that he had these people working on his campaign, and is now firing them solely because they are lobbyists is, well, maybe not wrong, but at the very least calculated.

Yes. These were his core staff members, without which he would never have had a campaign at all.

I agree. The fact is he should've never agreed to put them on his campaign to begin with. Of course, then they never would've given him any cash.

Again, I think McCain's decision to lock them out - regardless of what they might think he owes them - is ultimately the lesser of two evils. The alternative being yet another potential President bound to the whims of corporations with ulterior motives and agendas.

These guys aren't do-gooders backing the best candidate for America, they're self-servers looking to attach themselves to the most likely nominee/the nominee most likely to bend over backwards for them. They're only hurting right now because they've lost the political leverage they'd hoped to have if McCain became President.

They're people of honor that stuck by their man when he was down on the ropes last summer, when he had no better than a 1:100 chance of winning. McCain is the shameless opportunist here. He's only a maverick when convenient; hell, he violates his own campaign finance law.

Pfft! If they were people of honor, they would've donated their plentiful cash to the candidate they believed in without even wanting a place on his campaign. Call me a cynic, but anytime anyone gives money to a political figure with any sort of proviso attached, I'm automatically suspicious of both the giver and the receiver.

I'm not siding with McCain here. Hell, in my first post I called into question his motives in allowing them on his campaign in the first place. The one thing I don't judge him on is his decision to lock them out of something they had no "right" to be involved with in the first place, which includes whatever handshake deals their substantial donations bought them.

As to them standing by him when he was at his lowest ebb... surely that means their donations at the time were based on their faith in him to lead the country and nothing else. Surely they shouldn't care that they don't get a place in his inner circle, just that the underdog they backed with the beliefs that they share is now the republican candidate. Are their dollars any more important than those of the countless Americans who gave him donations with no provisos?

This is so true that McCain's flip-flopping reaches a ludicrous pitch. McCain thinks that the will of people to get out of Iraq doesn't mean anything and that a president shouldn't make decisions based on popular opinion.

But on the question of who controls foreign policy in Iran, McCain actually said that if the majority of Americans think it's President Ahmadinejad, then that's who controls foreign policy because the majority opinion makes it a fact even when it's not actually true.

They didn't just "stand by" him, or simply give him donations. They were already his organization, the bedrock of his staff, and despite being lobbyists and probably influence-peddlers, they physically stuck by him when his campaign was good for dead. Even though they could've jumped ship (as many did) for greener pasture. That's a big substantive difference from simply giving money and pulling away, which makes this backstab-of-sorts more noteworthy.