Martin Eisenstadt’s Blog

UPDATE (scroll down for original post)…. MSNBC did a nice “Breaking News” piece on me with David Schuster interviewing my fellow pundits, “Republican strategist” Todd Boulanger and “Democratic strategist” David Goodfriend about my difficult decision to come clean as the source of the Africa story. MSNBC tried to reach me today for an on-camera interview as well, but I was traveling between DC and New York when the story aired. I certainly have my issues with NBC, and even Keith Olbermann’s used me as a source on several occasions, so at least it was nice that this time they gave me full attribution.

Of course, as soon as their story ran, all hell apparently broke loose on the blogosphere, as you can probably tell by the vitriolic comments posted on the blog. My associate, Danny, has been trying to moderate the comments all day, but as you can see, many of the most vile ones snuck through anyway.

Danny tells me that one ongoing thread he’s seen on many of the blogs today is that I somehow don’t exist or am a fraud of some kind. As any loyal reader of the blog or of our new YouTube channel knows full well, every single one of these fallacious internet rumors can be attributed to a single source - a Mr. “Wolfrum,” whom we established is a very bitter tranny-loving golf blogger living in Brazil when we wrote about him back in June. When the BBC recently ran their YouTube series on me entitled “The Last Republican,” I even addressed the issue there. As you may have seen from my responses to this documentary, I’m quite upset at the way I was portrayed in the series, but in this one particular episode, at least I am asked, and I think I answer, the question directly. (please, though, I urge you to skip ahead to minute 1:50 where I address the issue head on - the rest of this episode takes much of what I say out of context)

For all of you naysayers out there, I ask you now not to believe everything you read on the internet. My reputation is at risk, and every single blog that has cast doubt on my existence has been traced back to this one, unrepentant golf blogger who has some sort of pathological grudge against me. And for those wondering why he would go after me, and try to discredit my views on Sarah Palin, you should take note that he himself comes from Alaska. Coincidence? Or just plain chance?

And I’ve posted it before, but I think it’s relevant here again, this is yet another specific case wherein I address my detractors in one of my video responses to the “The Last Republican”:


Finally, for anyone using inexact technology like Google, perhaps one reason you keep seeing the word “hoax” next to my name is because I have used this very blog to uncover several hoaxes, including the case of the photo-shopped Iranian missile picture, in which I was the first American to notice that the picture was a hoax. I urge people not to be gullible with the internet, and realize that you can’t trust the first couple lines of a Google search for all the answers.

HERE’S THE ORIGINAL POST:
By now you’ve all heard the Fox News report last week that “unnamed” former McCain advisers leaked that Sarah Palin was confused about whether Africa was a continent, and which countries were in NAFTA. I was perfectly happy staying under the radar as an anonymous source for Fox News‘ Carl Cameron, but now that Palin has accused her accusers of being “unprofessional…jerks…cowards… taking things out of context, and then tried to spread something on national news” and begun to cast doubt on the Fox News report, maybe she’s right to a certain extent. For those of us on the McCain campaign who thought that she acted like a rogue diva and lost John the election, maybe we DO have a responsibility to come out in public. But Sarah… careful what you ask for: some of us may have more to reveal.

So yes, to be clear, last week I was the one who leaked those things to a producer at Fox News who works with Cameron. Carl and his producers are good guys, and I don’t want them to have to worry about protecting their sources (and going through the wringer ala Judith Miller or Matt Cooper) on something like this.

As you know, I was one of the foreign policy advisers on the McCain campaign who worked with Randy Scheunemann to help prep Sarah on her debate with Joe Biden. Did we outright give her a geography quiz when we started the prep? No, of course not. But yes, in the context of the prep, it slowly became apparent that her grasp of basic geo-political knowledge had major gaps. Could she have passed a multiple choice test about South Africa or NAFTA. Probably. But it was clear that she simply didn’t have the ease of knowledge that we come to expect from a major party political candidate. Other slights came up, too: Not knowing the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas. Or the difference between the Shiites and Suni. Or when it came to international terrorist organizations, knowing that the IRA was in Northern Ireland, and ETA in Spain.

The real thing we had to constantly remind her was to never, ever compare herself in any way to Hillary Clinton, as she had at her announcement speech. We had it on good authority that Biden was prepping to unleash the inevitable line, “I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine. And Sarah, you’re no Hillary Clinton.” Alas, Biden would have been right.