John McCain’s foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann is defending his boss’s inexplicable and illogical answer in response to a question about whether he would agree to meet with the Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. McCain appeared not to know that Zapatero is the leader of Spain when answering the question from an interviewer earlier this week. Listen here:

In a letter to the Washington Post, Scheunemann claims McCain knew who Zapatero was and was simply articulating his policy of refusing to commit to “a White House meeting with President Zapatero.” Yglesias writes that this is “an insane policy,” given our treaty-bound obligations under NATO. Moreover, Scheunemann misidentifies Zapatero as Spain’s President, rather than Prime Minister.

In her first interview with ABC News last week, Sarah Palin made several bellicose statements — openly musing about war with Russia and refusing to “second guess” Israel if it were to attack Iran. She has ditched her previous talk of an “exit plan” for Iraq, and now supports John McCain’s endless war. At a troop deployment ceremony last week, Palin even linked Iraq to 9/11.

Palin’s hawkish turn is likely due to the influence of neoconservatives who have made Palin their new pet project. A former Republican White House official, who now works at the American Enterprise Institute, proudly declared Palin to be “a blank page. She’s going places and it’s worth going there with her.” Asked if he sees her as a “project”, the former official said: “Your word, not mine, but I wouldn’t disagree with the sentiment.”

The London Telegraph reports that neoconservatives long been trying to make Palin a messenger for their cause:

Sources in the McCain camp, the Republican Party and Washington think tanks say Mrs Palin was identified as a potential future leader of the neoconservative cause in June 2007. That was when the annual summer cruise organised by the right-of-centre Weekly Standard magazine docked in Juneau, the Alaskan state capital, and the pundits on board took tea with Governor Palin. […]

A former Republican White House official, who now works at the American Enterprise Institute, a bastion of Washington neoconservatism, admitted: “She’s bright and she’s a blank page. She’s going places and it’s worth going there with her.” Asked if he sees her as a “project”, the former official said: “Your word, not mine, but I wouldn’t disagree with the sentiment.”

Said Pat Buchanan: “Palin has become, overnight, the most priceless political asset the movement has. Look for the neocons to move with all deliberate speed to take her into their camp…and steering her into the AEI-Weekly Standard-War Party orbit.”

As the Wonk Room has documented, neoconservatives like Randy Scheunemann run the McCain’s foreign policy team. Scheunemann briefed Palin on international affairs prior to the ABC interview; the Telegraph reported that he “quickly made Steve Biegun, a former number three on the National Security Council, her chief foreign policy adviser.” Steve Clemons said Biegun “will turn her into an advocate of Cheneyism and Cheney’s view of national-security issues.”

Indeed, it should come as no surprise that prominent neoconservative Bill Kristol was the earliest advocate of Palin for VP. “In 1988, Mr. Kristol became a leading adviser of another inexperienced Republican vice presidential pick, Dan Quayle, tutoring him in foreign affairs,” the Telegraph observes.

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In 2007, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced legislation giving the Justice Department the discretion to prohibit gun sales to terror suspects. The legislation was supported by gun-control groups as well as the Bush administration.

Siding with the gun industry in opposing closing this “terror gap” was Randy Scheunemann, now Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) top foreign policy adviser. Newsweek reports that Scheunemann lobbied against the bill on behalf of the National Shooting Sports Foundation:

One group opposed to closing the loophole is the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun manufacturers’ trade association. Until this spring, one of its congressional lobbyists was Randy Scheunemann … Registration documents filed by Scheunemann’s company, Orion Strategies, list the terror-gap bill as one of its specific lobbying objectives, and the registrations listed Scheunemann as a lobbyist until he took a leave.

In response, the McCain campaign “declined to say if Scheunemann had ever lobbied McCain on gun-control bills.” McCain spokesperson Jill Hazelbaker said that Scheunemann is a “foreign-policy adviser.” In March, however, Scheunemann told National Journal that “he has weighed in with advice on Second Amendment and firearms issues” in advising McCain:

Officially the top foreign policy and national security adviser to McCain’s campaign, Scheunemann told National Journal in March he has weighed in with advice on Second Amendment and firearms issues. He said he had stopped lobbying for all his clients early this year, and his lobbying registration forms show that the NRA work ended at the end of 2007.

After McCain spoke to the NRA national convention in May, “Scheunemann spent most of his time at the event backstage — where McCain had a brief meeting with NRA leaders.”

Hinting at yet another conflict of interest, the McCain campaign “refused to answer questions about whether the senator supports or opposes the White House plan to close the loophole” giving expanded gun rights to terrorists, reports Newsweek.