Richard Quinn, a senior political aide to Senator John McCain is also the owner and editor-in chief of the neoconfederate SOUTHERN PARTISAN REVIEW QUARTERLY. This association was brought to the attention of the Arizona Senator during the 2000 campaign. Mr. McCain received a letter from PAWs Ralph Neas based on information compiled by FAIR. The story also received the attention of the NYT, New Republic and other mainstream publications. The flap fizzled when McCain lost the South Carolina primary in a vicious campaign against President George W. Bush. Shortly thereafter Mr. McCain’s campaign collapsed.
But rather than heed the criticism he received in 2000, McCain re-hired Quinn to run his 2008 South Carolina operation and also serves as an architect of McCain’s Southern Strategy. According to FEC reports filed through March of this year, McCain paid Quinn for GOTV and direct mail services totaling $155,000. The report seems to suggest that the McCain campaign is paying Quinn a monthly retainer of $15,000.
In the publication’s current issue The SOUTHERN PARTISAN awarded its " Scalawag Award" to the Virginia and North Carolina legislatures, both recently voted to apologize for slavery. The announcement included that the two state legislatures were worthy of their contempt. The award is given to those who support political correctness actions.
A 2001 FAIR analysis, complied for the confirmation hearing of former attorney General John Ashcroft accuses the REVIEW of being: pro-slavery, anti-Lincoln, pro-Klan, anti- feminist, and anti-homosexual. The disputation concludes that it is anti -everything else but us, which this writer assumes to mean anyone other than, white Anglo Saxon Christian males.
BACKGROUND:A copy of FAIR’s analysis, the People for the American Way’s letter to Senator McCain demanding Quinn’s firing is available as well as the 2000 story from the NYT.
Former-Senator John Ashcroft came under fire during his confirmation to be Attorney General for an interview he gave to SOUTHERN PARTISAN in which he praised General Robert E. Lee.
One must admit in all honesty that the gotcha by PAW and FAIR could have been biased in the leftist direction. However, McCain’s apparent deafness and lack of investigation into Quinn’s background—who is an ardent supporter of the Confederate flag—is anti-mainstream particularly when the nomination of his presumptive opponent is a sterling example of American’s maturing attitude on race and race relations, yesterday’s Washington Post story notwithstanding.
McCain’s employment of Quinn clearly illustrates that he is a candidate of the old politics and demonstrates an extreme insensitivity and an admission by McCain that he is proactively seeking the neo-confederate segregationist vote. He seems to be courting this group as he did Reverend Hagee.
Quinn was the campaign consultant for a ballot referendum campaign in 1996 on whether to continue to fly the stars and bars over South Carolina’s state capitol and firmly disagreed with the removal of the confederate flag from the Capitol to a Civil War memorial on the capitol quadrangle.
The main views expressed by the PARTISAN REVIEW are to demonize President Abraham Lincoln, bring back the Articles of Confederation and restore what they call "the southern way of life."
BACKGROUND