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Who is Soren Dayton, the McCain campaign aide suspended over a YouTube link on Twitter? He's a consultant specializing in "'modern' ('new') media communications," an alumnus of the University of Chicago and the National Defense University, and a Republican true believer. Here he's pictured with evangelical republican La Shawn Barber at the BlogWorld conference, and she's, like, totally black! So he's not necessarily racist, just an opportunist who knows a good smear video when he sees one.

Reading between the posts at his election blog, I gather that he joined the McCain campaign in February. Before that, he also kept an eye on the liberal blogosphere at TechPresident and followed the McCain primary campaign on RedState. According to his LinkedIn profile, he's been a legislative aide and worked at database software company OverX. 88 supporters have signed up to the Facebook group put together by Joshua Treviño.

Coming to his defense, conservative blogger Patrick Ruffini at Townhall admits to being "looser" on Twitter because of a false sense of security. Is that like a friend who only uses slurs when there aren't any minorities around? Steve Rhodes captured a screenshot of Dayton's Twitter account shortly before it was deleted. What was going through the man's mind at the time?

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Obama, Obama, Obama . If Republican Web strategists paid a little more attention to their own candidate, McCain would have a higher profile online.