Robert Stacy McCain (born 1959) is an American conservative journalist and writer. McCain is a former assistant national editor for The Washington Times and co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of the 2006 book Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party (ISBN 978-1-59555-024-8). He is a distant cousin of John McCain, the United States Senator.
McCain was born in Atlanta, Georgia and graduated in 1983 from Jacksonville State University in Alabama. His journalism career began with the (now defunct) Cobb News-Chronicle in 1986. He then worked as a sports editor for the Marietta, Georgia-based Neighbor Newspapers, before joining the Calhoun (Ga.) Times as sports editor in September 1987. The Calhoun newspaper is a division of Rome, Georgia-based News Publishing Co.
In 1991, McCain joined the staff of the company's flagship daily newspaper, The Rome News-Tribune, working closely with special projects/editorial page editor Pierre Rene-Noth. Frequently writing about such subjects as education and history, McCain was awarded a George Washington Honor Medal from the conservative Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge for his 1995 series of columns about the National Standards for U.S. History.
The Washington Times
McCain joined the staff of The Washington Times in November 1997. In addition to his regular duties as an editor, McCain also contributed numerous by-lined news and feature articles to The Washington Times. He frequently reported on controversial issues in the “culture war,” including stories related to sexuality, education and history. His writings about communism included feature stories about Joseph McCarthy, The Black Book of Communism, and the obituary of former U.S. Communist Party leader Gus Hall. McCain’s reporting on controversies surrounding sexuality has included features about Alfred Kinsey, the Jesse Dirkhising murder case, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Judith Levine’s controversial 2002 book, Harmful to Minors.
In 2003, McCain was named editor of the “Culture, Etc.” page of The Washington Times, which appears on Page A2 of the newspaper Monday through Friday. Over the years, McCain interviewed many prominent authors and personalities, including John Stossel, David Horowitz, Peter Jennings Wendy Shalit , Ronald Radosh, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Tammy Bruce, Andrew Breitbart, William J. Bennett, Phyllis Chesler, Ward Connerly, Michael Savage, Dinesh D'Souza, L. Brent Bozell III, David Frum Ann Coulter Michelle Malkin and Cal Thomas. When former President Ronald Reagan died in June 2004, McCain authored the memorial article that appeared as a special feature in The Washington Times.
In 2006, McCain co-wrote Donkey Cons with Lynn Vincent, and created a blog to promote the book.
McCain also contributed freelance articles, reviews and commentary pieces to a number of publications including The American Spectator, Reason, The American Conservative, Ripon Forum, and A Magazine of American Culture, as well as such online forums as The Conservative Voice and The American Thinker.
2008 to present
In January 2008, McCain announced he would resign from The Washington Times in order to concentrate on a book project and began blogging about the 2008 presidential race as "The Other McCain". Stacy McCain argues that John S. McCain is not a "real conservative," and ended up supporting Bob Barr in the 2008 election.
His main blog, The Other McCain, has been growing in popularity since he started it in early 2008, reaching a million hits in February 2009. Soon after that he wrote "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year".
In March 30, 2010, McCain sarcastically commented that "we know that John McCain is sincere about his newfound border-security concerns, right? All that stuff a few years ago calling his critics hatemongering xenophobes — just kiddin’ guys, hahaha." He then wrote 'J. D. Hayworth for U.S. Senate' in all capital letters.
McCain lives in Maryland with his wife and their six children. They homeschool their children.
McCain is a Christian. He has said, "I am a poor excuse for a Christian, but I really do have a deep faith in God".
McCain is a distant cousin of Senator John McCain, whom he frequently criticizes, often deriding him as "Crazy Cousin John". The kinship is based on a common ancestor in South Carolina listed in the 1790 Census.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has noted that McCain is a member of the Southern nationalist League of the South, which the SPLC calls a white supremacist hate group,a charge the League denied.In response, McCain states that the SPLC "first attacked [him] after" he reported statements criticizing it in a Washington Times news item, and that he "was an outspoken leader of the non-racist faction" when a white supremacist tried to get the League to adopt supremacist views.He also claims that The Washington Times forbade him to respond to the SPLC's accusation for many years, because doing so would have publicized the SPLC.
McCain used to be a Democrat, but he changed his views completely and remarked in a March 2010 interview that "anything that is good for the Democratic Party is bad for America, and vice versa." He pointed to reading back issues of The Freeman, a libertarian magazine, through the mid-1990s that his then-editor lent him. McCain identifies as a supporter of Austrian economic theory in the vein of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek such that he thinks that broader social goals such as "social justice" cannot practically work out. He also calls himself "profoundly skeptical of radical notions of moral and political progress" in social issues, citing Edmund Burke as an influence.
McCain said in March 2010 that he disagreed with the invasion of Iraq and wanted to express his criticism publicly at the time, but he could not do so since his supervisors and colleagues at The Washington Times did not approve. He remarked that "Any way you look at it, war is a very bad thing" while adding "but losing a war is worse" (italics in the original).
