MacKinnon: McCain Campaign STILL Owes Palin An Apology

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Former Reagan speechwriter Douglas MacKinnon, in a Townhall.com column, says the McCain campaign should have secured live interviews with ABC's Charlie Gibson and CBS' Katie Couric. Live interviews, explains MacKinnon, put the candidate on a level playing field with the interviewer, prevents words from being taken out of context, and doesn't allow anchors and producers to maliciously edit the candidate's comments after the fact:

As the video popped-up this week of far-left, ultra wealthy, and privileged CBS “News” anchor Katie Couric going after then Governor Sarah Palin while mocking the names of her children, it reminded me all over again how much Palin is owed an apology from the “leadership” of the McCain campaign.

This anti-Palin “let them eat cake” video rant by Couric (filmed the day McCain announced the traditional values Palin as his running mate) serves as further proof that most in the mainstream media are not only liberal and unethical, but dangerously out of touch with everyday Americans and everyday life.

During the campaign, Sarah Palin was unfairly criticized by all on the left and many on the right for the interviews she did with first ABC’s Charlie Gibson and then Couric. Both taking place in September of 2008.

Why the McCain campaign let proven liberal propagandists like Gibson and Couric “interview” Palin is still beyond me. That they did not prepare Governor Palin properly or set the needed ground rules with ABC and CBS is still inexcusable.

Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, if you are the press secretary or director of communications for a presidential or vice-presidential candidate, you are always looking to establish certain ground rules with the press. Job one for the press secretary is to make sure your candidate is not ambushed or made to look bad. Clearly Palin was both ambushed and sabotaged by Gibson and Couric.

Read the Mackinnon's unedited op-ed here.

- JP

Baehr: The Obama Victory Reconsidered

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Two new books from Oxford University Press try to explain the results of the 2008 presidential election. They are The Obama Victory: How Media, Money and Message Shaped the 2008 Election by Kate Kenski, Bruce W. Hardy, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, and The Performance of Politics: Obama's Victory and the Democratic Struggle for Power by Jeffrey Alexander. Richard Baehr reviews both for American Thinker, and here are some excerpts which reference McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate:

The question of Palin's readiness might have also been applied to Obama, a man with fancy degrees but a very thin resume on the national scene, running for the top spot, not the second one on the ticket. Speech-making prowess is not the same as governing experience in terms of preparation and readiness for the job. But Obama's experience deficit never really became a major issue, and during the campaign -- particularly during the debates -- he passed the threshold test for acceptability as president.

Alexander... is the first writer I have read to have noticed that during the first two weeks of September, Obama for the first time in the campaign seemed angry and off-stride. After being the "hot" candidate, the object of affection and hero-worship around the country and the world for nearly two years, all of a sudden, Palin was the newer, fresher face, even more dazzling. Obama seemed stressed to be out of the spotlight and not "the one."

Alexander is clearly a liberal, and one who was caught up in the Obama victory (this is apparent in the book's first pages describing the "magic" of Obama's election night victory as Alexander walked in Manhattan with his son). In detailing how the Palin selection gave McCain a jolt of momentum that wore off quickly, he describes the daily drip, drip, drip of stories from the mainstream media, obtained after each organization sent up small armies of reporters to dig for dirt on Palin in Alaska. As a surprise pick, there was plenty of interest in Palin, and there was nothing wrong with reporters trying to learn more about her. But if the Journolist saga of the last few weeks revealed anything significant about the mainstream liberal press, it is their behavior in two time periods in the 2008 campaign -- first looking to protect Obama after the Reverend Wright videos surfaced, and then trashing Palin after she arrived on the scene.

[...]

Alexander never questions why the major media showed so much less interest in Obama's Chicago than they did in Palin's Alaska. Palin immediately came under attack for things said by speakers in her church in Wasilla. Obama had been a national candidate for over a year before Brian Ross produced video of Reverend Wright. These explosive videos were for sale at the church, had the media been interested. Would John McCain have gotten a pass had he attended a racist church for twenty years and sat through Reverend Wright-like sermons?

McCain pollster Bill McInturff had concluded that if his campaign had focused on Obama's connection to Wright, the Arizona Senator may have been able to win the Electoral College, but would have list the popular ballot by an estimated 3 million votes. McInturff actually worried that attacking Wright could result in urban violence, and he convinced the geniuses in charge of McCain's run that the imagined "riots" would undermine a McCain presidency. We can't help but ask which part of "G_D_ America" Team McCain didn't understand.

- JP

Quote of the Day (March 8, 2010)

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Villainous Company:

"The over the top rants of her detractors, though highly entertaining, aren't terribly convincing. Palin is clearly not a stupid woman. Being deep selected as the VP candidate presented her with about as difficult a task as any politician has ever faced. To her credit, she performed remarkably well. It was hard enough being catapulted onto the national stage without sufficient prep time, but Palin was further constrained by the knowledge that it wasn't her campaign. She was expected to champion a platform she had no hand in shaping. Joe Biden, an experienced political hand who faced none of the hostility the press directed at Palin, had a hard time remembering what he was supposed to support."

- JP

John Hawkins: Meg Whitman is dead to me

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Excellent John Hawkins post at Right Wing News today:

One the worst of McCain's staffers was Mike Murphy, who ripped on Sarah Palin like it was his new job. Where was the loyalty to the campaign? Where was the respect for all the conservatives that thought choosing Sarah Palin was the best move McCain made in the entire campaign?

[...]

So when Meg Whitman, who's running for governor, chose to hire Mike Murphy, what does it say?

It says that she holds Sarah Palin's many fans in the Republican party in absolute contempt. She thinks so little of them and feels their support is so unwanted for her campaign, that she's going to hire a guy like Mike Murphy, who made more of a name for himself trashing Sarah Palin than he did working for the McCain campaign.

Well, here's what I say: Any candidate who hires Mike Murphy, Steve Schmidt, or Nicolle Wallace -- the McCain staffers who trashed Palin -- that candidate is dead to me.

Read the unabridged original here.

- JP

McCain calls tension between Palin and his aides "no big deal"

We're wondering just how out of it John McCain was when it came to the running of his campaign for president in 2008. Judging from some of the things that he's said, it appears he was not very involved in the campaign at all and chose to delegate most everything to his campaign subordinates.

Take, for example what he told the Associated Press in a Saturday interview:

"U.S. Sen. John McCain says he enjoyed reading Sarah Palin's new memoir and says the tension between his campaign aides and hers is no big deal."

Perhaps it was "no big deal" to the Senator, but it certainly made political life for Sarah Palin -- whom McCain referred to as a "dear friend" -- more difficult, to say the very least.

It's astouding to see how out of it the man from Arizona was (and continues to be) about one of the significant events in recent American history.

- JP

Jeanette Pryor: The Truth About Sarah’s Ruby Slippers

Another outstanding blog post by Jeanette Pryor:

Everywhere in America, people are reading* that Sarah Palin didn’t run an Iditarod through Neiman Marcus, after all. She wasn’t a diva. Ms. Klein, the New York fashion consultant who outfitted the entire Palin family, has told the true story. Sarah wasn’t a diva who loaded her sled with high-end fashion while posing as an average PTA mom. There really was a brilliant magician who shook her head at the family when they arrived in their, “real-life everyday clothes,” and, after pulling the last pin out and tugging on the last loose thread, sent the altered Palins onto the stage of history.

[...]

The Time’s article is a turning point in our country’s relationship with Sarah Palin. It proves that life really is all about the shoes. In this case, Sarah Palin’s shoes. “If the media got the shoes wrong, what else did they make up about her.”

*The New York Times article Jeanette Pryor refers to is here. Please go here to read Ms. Pryor's post in full.

- JP

McCain says he's 'grateful' that Palin was his running mate

Sen. John McCain said Thursday he has read Sarah Palin's book and he still has no regrets about choosing her as his running mate in the e2008 presidential campaign.

"I felt honored to have Sarah," said Mr. McCain, Arizona Republican. "There's no doubt she energized our party and America. She's doing it today."

This is, however, the same John McCain who just Wednesday defended two of his top campaign aides -- Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace -- whom former Governor Palin criticized in her Going Rogue memoir. McCain is still working both sides of the street, it seems.

- JP

McCain asks aides to ignore Palin; they ignore him instead

Eric Zimmermann of The Hill reports from the Blog Briefing Room that John McCain has told his aides not to talk to the media about Sarah Palin or her memoir Going Rogue. They aren't listening to him:

John McCain has asked his former campaign aides not to speak out against the charges Sarah Palin levels in her book, NBC news reports.

This news comes after a number of former staffers anonymously blasted Palin's recount of the 2008 campaign.

[...]

Even as NBC reported McCain's request, they included another swipe at her book from a former campaign aide.

No small wonder that the McCain campaign was such a disaster. Not only would they not listen to their VP candidate, they won't even listen to their boss nor abide by his requests. These idiots are still on one big power trip. One thing seems certain -- their future as campaign gurus is a shaky one at best. Perhaps their media friends will help them land jobs at MSNBC and the New York Slimes as payback for the juicy leaks they made up out of thing air and passed along. Oh, wait. The Slimes is laying people off, not hiring. Go figure...

- JP

Matthew May: Steve Schmidt is the GOP's Bob Shrum

On the American Thinker Blog, Matthew May slices and dices Steve Schmidt:

Steve Schmidt is a loser.

That is not a smear but a documented fact. Schmidt managed the McCain for President campaign. McCain, as you will recall, lost to Barack Obama in the 2008 election. Schmidt and his candidate bungled the campaign so badly that an untested, smooth-talking, America-bashing dilettante now occupies the White House as Commander-in-Chief.

Great job, guys!

Like a diligent virus, Schmidt refuses to leave the body politic. He is back again to call Sarah Palin's new book "total fiction." Interesting.

[...]

The one thing - the only thing - the McCain campaign got right was introducing Sarah Palin to the national stage.

[...]

So when a hack like Steve Schmidt says that Palin's book is "total fiction," consider the source. He and his bitter aides should retreat to the sidelines for a long, long time and reflect upon how badly their bungling stupidity and unwillingness to tell the hard truths about candidate Obama has damaged the republic.

Read May's full post here to learn how many Michigan Republicans felt abandoned by Schmidt's decision to cede the Great Lakes State to Obama and how it hurt Michigan GOP candidates down the ticket.

- JP

Sarah Palin to Barbara Walters: "I'll take the blame"

In her interview with ABC's Barbara Walters, Sarah Palin offers an explanation of why McCain campaign staffers dumped on her:

Walters: "Towards the end of the campaign, the press reports quoted 'unnamed McCain aides' calling you 'a diva', 'a whack job', 'a narcissist'... Why do you think these people were trying to destroy your reputation?" 

Palin: "For some people this is a business, and if failure in this business is going to reflect poorly on them, they have to pack their own parachutes and protect themselves and their reputations so they wouldn't be blamed. I'll take the blame, though, because I know at the end of the day what the truth is."

The video clip is at Real Clear Politics.

- JP

McCain campaign hid cost of clothing items from Sarah Palin

Left-wing bloggers, gossip columnists, Democrats and the in-the-tank-for-Obama media have all made hay over the price the RNC paid for clothes that the McCain campaign inisted that she wear during the 2008 election contest.

We have said many times that the $150,000 wardrobe was something that Sarah Palin never asked for, didn't shop for and would have preferred to do without. Now a nugget from the new book by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe, Sarah From Alaska, confirms what we have maintained all along:

Stylist Lisa Kline also addresses the controversy over the cost of clothes Palin wore on the campaign trail.

When "Palin... expressed concern over the exorbitant expense of some" of the items, Kline and Palin’s assistant removed the price tags to keep her unaware of the cost.

In her own book Going Rogue, Associated Press Writer Richard Pienciak reveals:

Taken aback by all the fussing, she wondered who was paying for the fancy clothes - family members were told it was being taken care of or was "part of the convention."

But those out to destroy Sarah Palin have never let facts get in the way of a good smear job. And they never wanted to talk about the more than $150,000 the Gore campaign paid Naomi Wolf to be Big Al's fashion consultant during the 2004 presidential race.

- JP

Going Rogue: Couric interview was a setup by Nicole Wallace

Now that the media types have their advance copies of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue memoir, bits and pieces of the book are beginning to leak out. The first morsels were revealed Tuesday by Mark Halperin. Now Associated Press Writer Richard Pienciak has divulged more details in an AP wire report.

According to Pienciak's reading of Going Rogue, a large chunk of Governor Palin's legal fees came unexpectedly in a bill presented to her by her running mate's campaign:

In the months leading up to her July resignation as Alaska governor, her legal bills had mounted to more than $500,000, fueled mostly by what she called frivolous ethics complaints. What appeared to upset her most, though, was that about $50,000 of the legal bills was her share of the expenses for being vetted for the VP nod, Palin writes.

She said no one had ever informed her that she would have to personally take care of any expenses related to the selection process.

Many Palin supporters have suspected that the Katie Couric interview arranged by the McCain campaign was a setup. Pienciak's story refers to a part of the former governor's book which would tend to confirm that suspicion:

She writes at length about Couric. She says that the idea to meet with Couric came from McCain campaign aide Nicolle Wallace, who told Palin that Couric - also a working mother - liked and admired her. It would be a favor to Couric, too, whom Palin notes had the lowest ratings of the network anchors. Wallace said Couric suffered from low self-esteem. And Palin replied that she almost began to "feel sorry" for Couric.

She alleges that Couric and CBS left out her more "substantive" remarks and settled for "gotcha" moments. She writes that Couric had a "partisan agenda" and a condescending manner. Couric was "badgering," biased and far easier on Couric's Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden.

Going Rogue is scheduled to hit the bookshelves Tuesday, November 17.

Editor's Note: AP initially reported the amount billed to palin by the McCain campaign as $500,000. Now AP has a rewrite of the story out (Without offering an explanation or retraction) in which it is reporting the figure as $50,000.

McCain campaign officials are disputing the claim that they billed Palin. Meanwhile the former governor's spokesperson Meg Stapleton won't comment, saying only that the book is embargoed until its official release date, which is next Tuesday.

So it's unclear just how much AP got wrong about Going Rogue. Did they just screw up on the dollar amount, or is the part of their story about the vetting billing inaccurate? Is the rest of the AP story credible, or were they just "making things up"?

- JP

Mark Halperin: A Preview of Sarah Palin's Book

TIME magazine senior political analyst Mark Halperin, blogging on The Page, says that Sarah Palin's Going Rogue has begun shipping, and some of the former governor's associates have received their copies in advance of the November 17 release date.  Some of them have been talking, and from what Halpren says, it is for good reason that some McCain campaign staffers have been dreading the release of this book.  Here's what Halpren has learned about what's between the covers of the highly-anticipated memoir: 

* just five chapters—but they are very, very long.

* some score settling with McCain aides she believes ill-served her (names will be named).

* a hearty bashing of the national media.

* an account of how her upbringing shaped her maverick sensibilities.

* a testimonial to the importance of faith in her life.

* a warm and personal tone, written in Palin's own voice, despite the involvement of a collaborator.

Something tells us that the 1.5 million copies in the initial printing won't be enough to satisfy demand for this book.

Update: Moe Lane tips the RedState.com hat to Andrew Malcolm:

"Andrew’s one of the few mainstream journalists who cares about the Wasilla Church Burning, so I think that we can safely assume that he’s enjoying the prospect of names being named, too."

Related: Perhaps due to these new details about Sarah Palin's book, Going Rogue, which had slipped to #2 behind the new Stephen King thriller, has jumped back to #1 on Amazon.com's Bestsellers in Books list.

- JP

Quote of the Day (November 10, 2009)

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Professor James E. Campbell:

"Was the McCain plummet in the polls a negative reaction to his selection of Sarah Palin as a vice presidential candidate or a negative reaction to the Wall Street meltdown? The evidence again supports the impact of the meltdown."

- JP

The speeches Sarah Palin never delivered

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Visit Top of the Ticket for Andrew Malcom's post on the two speeches, one of which Sarah Palin was to deliver on election night a year ago.

As is typical of the incompetent McCain campaign, the speeches were prepared for the vice presidential candidate to read and then introduce McCain to read his speech, but McCain's people decided that Palin shouldn't speak because it was "unprecedented" for a VP candidate to deliver a concession speech.

Only problem with that excuse is that vice presidential candidate John Edwards delivered a concession speech November 3, 2004 at Faneuil Hall in Boston, Massachusetts following the loss by the Kerry-Edwards ticket in that presidential election,  so there was indeed a precedent for doing so.

We have to ask what the McCain people were afraid of? Did they think that Sarah Palin would walk up to the podium and tell the world what weasels Steve Schmidt and Co. really are?

- JP

Matt Latimer on Sarah Palin's enduring appeal

In a Daily Beast op-ed the former Bush speech writer says Sarah Palin is still the class of the 2012 field, and she's not going away anytime soon. Why? Because the rank and file are fed up with the establishment Republicans who have almost drained all of the "Grand" out of the Grand Old party, and they see Palin as the cure for the disease they carry.

A few excerpts:

The latest news in Washington is that the conservative Minnesota governor (and potential 2012 presidential contender) has caught the eye of the city’s top Republican gurus. You remember them. The same guys who last year treated voters to the John McCain experience and whose keen advice left President Bush with a 22 percent approval rating as a parting gift for his eight years in office.

[...]

Not long ago, McCain's campaign honcho, Steve Schmidt, a veteran of Bush-Rove world, publicly labeled a possible Palin presidential candidacy "catastrophic." The smooth-pated Schmidt looked like an angry pit boss asking security to remove a patron who was winning too many chips against the house.

[...]

After all, does anyone truly think Sarah Palin can be the 2012 GOP nominee? To borrow a phrase from everyone's favorite Alaskan, you betcha!

[...]

The rank-and-file are tired of the bland phonies running the GOP. They are tired of Republican compromises that bloated spending and expanded the federal government. And they feel helpless against a team of buddies running each campaign more cynically than the last.

[...]

If the grand poo-bahs of the GOP think they can find someone to push her aside, their pickings seem drearily slim.

Latimer's op-ed is a refreshing change for the Daily Beast,  a website which has attacked Sarah Palin relentlessly, and in the nastiest manner. We're saving the best quote from the piece for Friday's QOTD, but it's not hard to spot if you read the entire article.

- JP

Running scared: Schmidt says Palin helped McCain's campaign

The same McCain advisor who has said that Sarah Palin would be a "catastrophe" for the GOP were she to become its 2012 presidential candidate, now says that she was an asset to the Arizona Senator's 2008 run for the White House.

Speaking at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, Steve Schmidt also defended the decision to bring the former Alaska governor on board as McCain's running mate.

The Associated Press reports that Schmidt, who was chief strategist for McCain's presidential campaign, did not elaborate on his previous criticism of Palin, but volunteered that in his opinion, Palin has "great talents" for politics.

So Steve, please explain how the 2008 vice presidential candidate was helpful to McCain's '08 campaign, but would be a "catastrophe" at the top of the GOP ticket in 2012? You appear to be starting to backpedal a bit, Sparky. Is that fear we see in those beady little eyes? The impending release of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue memoir seems to have stirred your nest of weasels.

Good. Those critters are fun to watch when they squirm. 

More from the Arkansas News Bureau.

- JP

Thank you, AP

AP is a wire service so obsessed with portraying Sarah Palin in a negative light that Palin supporters might be excused for believing that the letters "AP" stand for "Anti Palin" rather than Associated Press. But AP has unwittingly done the former governor a huge favor. In a positively gushing love offering to Maine's Olympia Snowe, Ay-Pee liberal hack Laurie Kellman begins:

Forget Sarah Palin. The female maverick of the Republican Party is Sen. Olympia Snowe.

Media watchdog Tom Blumer of NewsBusters.org commented:

Kellman's opening is revealing on a number of levels. To bring Palin into this at all exposes the establishment press's obsession with dissing her at every conceivable opportunity. It also classically employs the "sudden respect" technique the media has used for decades to buck up Republicans who sell out core principles. Finally, it sends a message to male Republican "maverick" John McCain that he's being upstaged, and that to keep his media cred he should join hands with Snowe in acquiescing to statist health care.

But there's one more level of revelation to be explored here. When Sarah Palin was drafted by John McCain, his campaign team immediately branded her a maverick. In their eyes, she was McCain's "co-maverick" because she had taken on the GOP establishment in her home state. But "maverick" has a different meaning to conservatives, who see McCain as a Vichy Republican who stabs the conservatives of his own party in the back at precisely the moments when they most need his votes and leadership.

After being incompetently mishandled by McCain's people who tried to keep her cut off from even the friendliest media figures, Sarah Palin dared to talk to Glenn Beck by telephone from the hotel room that had become her jail cell. For this unforgivable sin, they re-branded her as a "rogue." So if a maverick is a Republican who sides with Democrats against conservatives, then a rogue must be someone who refuses to play that game. That is why Palin wears the "rogue" label as a badge of honor and incorporated the honorific into the title of her forthcoming memoir.

Clueless AP, by branding Snowe as the "real maverick" has helped Sarah Palin complete her rebranding effort. The Associated Press has confirmed that Sen. Olympia Snowe is John McCain's true political soul mate and his backup back stabber. Former Governor Palin, who had been a prisoner of the McCain campaign, has been working to distance herself from the maverick brand since the November, 2008 election. She should send AP's Kellman a thank your note.

Hot Air's Allahpundit gets the last word:

The Palin comparison is useful, though. If Sarahcuda had said something as comically insipid as “When history calls, history calls,” Tina Fey would have an entire skit built around it on SNL this week. As it is, our moronic media’s treating it as some sort of faux-profound rendezvous with destiny.

- JP

A first: We disagree with Don Surber

We can't recall ever having occasion to disagree with Don Surber, but there's a first time for everything, as the old saying goes. On CNN's "State of the Union" program Sunday, John McCain had some very positive things to say about his former running mate, as we noted here.

According to Surber:

"After nearly a year of leaving Sarah Palin hanging to dry on gossip spread by his campaign staff, John McCain finally defended her as he discussed his failed campaign."

That's not entirely correct. McCain has lauded Palin on several occasions, more so some times than others. And the reason behind the Arizona Senator's latest praise for Palin, in Surber's opinion:

"Methinks he knows she has a score to settle with him."

Again, that's true, but only to a certain extent. We've been watching Sarah Palin closely now for well over a year. Being directly critical of John McCain is not Sarah's style. Both during the campaign and after, she always treated McCain with the utmost respect and honored him as a true American hero. We believe her admiration for the man is genuine.

We could be wrong, but when her book comes out, we think she will pay tribute to those members of the McCain campaign who supported her. As for those who stabbed her in the back, she may or may not call them out individually. But by extolling the virtue of those who gave her their loyalty, the treachery of the others will be exposed by implication at the least.

As for McCain himself, we believe Sarah Palin will treat him better than he deserves. He may be in for a slap on the wrist for failing to put a stop to the perfidy of the liars and leakers, but she will probably give the man a pass and excuse his lack of leadership by blaming his top lieutenants for keeping him in the dark.

Sarah Palin is a quick learner, and one lesson she has taken to heart is that in politics, you don't burn bridges now which you might need to cross later. Her battles with the corrupt establishment on her own party in Alaska have taught her that much and more. She is also a student of Ronald Reagan who counseled his fellow GOPers not to speak ill of fellow Republicans.

But Don Surber may yet prove to be correct, in which case we will acknowledge it and admit our error when we have the book in hand. We only have 35 days to wait, but who's counting?

- JP

Sarah Palin Was Right #11: Palling Around With the McCain Campaign

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In light of Sarah Palin's decision to title her forthcoming memoir Going Rogue and recent statements critical of the 2008 GOP VP candidate made by senior McCain Campaign strategist and advisor Steve Schmidt, let's rewind a few months to July 10. A report last summer by Atlantic columnist Marc Ambinder, from the pages of Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson's "extremely well-reported history of the 2008 presidential campaign" -- The Battle for America -- puts both Sarah Palin's wording for her book title and her remarks on the stump about "palling around with terrorists" in proper perspective:

Whose idea was it for Gov. Sarah Palin to attack Barack Obama as a guy who "pals around with terrorists?" Palin's camp has always insisted that the McCain high command endorsed the stratagem, while folks close to McCain have accused Palin of going "rogue" and pointed to the "pals around" attack as an example of how Palin simply could not be controlled.

[...]

But on the subject of linking Obama to ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers, it turns out that Palin hadn't gone rogue. Balz and Johnson answer this question pretty definitively. They've obtained an e-mail from campaign adviser Nicolle Wallace sent to Palin on the morning of October 4rd, with an attached New York Times article about Obama's relationship with Ayers:

"Governor and Team: rick [Davis], Steve [Schmidt] and I suggest the following attack from the new york times. If you are comfortable, please deliver the attack as written. Please do not make any changes to the below without approval from steve or myself because precision is crucial in our ability to introduce this."

McCain HQ had suggested the following line:

"This is not a man who sees American as you and I do -- as the greatest force for good in the world. This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country."

At the event, Palin said this:

"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country. This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."

Schmidt has never denied ordering this attack, although others in the campaign told me at the time that Palin had instigated it.

We blogged about this back on July 10, but Ambinder's revelation, which should have been a blockbuster of a news story, was not widely reported by the Democrat-Media Complex. God forbid that they report anything which vindicates Sarah Palin!

- JP