Un-retouched Palin family portrait taken at Sears, courtesy of Something Awful

I agree with Jason Zengerle that you have to feel kind of bad for  McCain strategist Steve Schmidt even if he did have a hand in picking the Nome Nitwit as McCain’s running mate. As a candidate, McCain was shit-on-a-stick and rolling him in the nuts that is the Palin snowbilly circus sideshow didn’t make him any more appealing. But, in the face of the Obama Megatron Steamroller,  the McCain campaign had little choice but to throw the Hail Mary pass that was Bible Spice and then pray that they could keep the media at bay by dazzling them with winks and Wasilla Valley cornpone.

As they say on the midway: ‘you pays yer money and you takes yer chances’ and the McCain campaign  bet big and  lost bigger. Now Conservatives want to blame it all on Steve Schmidt because he wasn’t huckster enough (see: Rove, Karl)  to sell it to people they think are bigger  rubes than themselves.

Over at Conservatives4Palin  (which makes Jonestown look like a YMCA daycamp) they’re all:

That’s funny coming from someone who doesn’t have all that great of a resume according to Wikipedia:

  • 1995 – Schmidt managed Will T. Scott’s unsuccessful campaign for attorney general of Kentucky.
  • 1998 – Schmidt managed Tim Leslie’s unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor of California.
  • 1998 – Schmidt was the communications director for the unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of Matt Fong.
  • 1999 – Schmidt was the communications director for Lamar Alexander’s unsuccessful presidential run.
  • 2004 – Schmidt was a member of the senior strategic planning group that ran President George W. Bush’s successful re-election campaign
  • 2006 – Schmidt managed the successful re-election campaign for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
  • 2008 – Schmidt headed up the day to day operations for Senator John McCain’s unsuccessful bid for U.S. President.

You would think they would take some pride in the Bush and Schwarzenegger campaigns, but then I keep forgetting that those two guys aren’t "real Republicans", so fuck them and the Schmidt they rode in on.

Also. Zengerle points out that the RedState Operation Leper show trials have begun.

Judge Moe presiding:

If you are a McCain staffer who did not talk to VF, I suggest that you find some way to demonstrate that you aren’t one of the people in the first paragraph.  Because until we know who talked, the default assumption is going to be that you may have talked.  This will not wreck your career, but it will blight it if the base has anything to say about it.  On the bright side, a simple and declarative denial will do; of course, if your denial is a lie and we catch you at it, brush up on your typing skills.

Moe Lane

Loyalty oaths and purges are the new black Republican Party.