| There's a yard sign in Martinsburg that looks like an official yard sign from the McCain-Palin campaign though I searched for it on the campaign web site without success. I'll have to take a picture of it.
It says: "Sarah!" in beg letters with McCain Palin underneath.
Apparently that sign tells the story of their campaign. In case you missed this, the Republicans have the knives out to stick in each other's backs.
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (CNN) - With 10 days to go until election day, long brewing tension between Sarah Palin and key aides to John McCain has become so intense, it is spilling out into the public.
Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue" recently, while a Palin associate says she is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a mishandled roll-out that damaged her.
McCain sources point to several incidents where Palin has gone off message, and privately wonder if they were deliberate. For example: labeling robo calls "irritating," even as the campaign was defending the use of them and telling reporters she disagreed with the campaigns controversial decision to pull out of Michigan.
A second McCain source tells CNN she appears to now be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.
I guess that happens when you spend 15 minutes vetting a vice presidential candidate who turns out to make up for her lack of intelligence with an overdeveloped ambition.
But two sources, one Palin associate and one McCain adviser, defended the decision to keep her press interaction limited after she was picked, both saying flatly that she was not ready and that the missteps could have been a lot worse.
They insisted that she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McCain's record.
"Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."
That says more about John McCain and his lack of judgment than it does about Sarah Palin. "Country First" my ass.
I was thinking about Joe Biden in Charleston on my way in to Martinsburg this morning. He wasn't my first pick for vice president yet alone president, but if, God forbid, he had to step into the role of president, he'd do a fine job. He's intelligent and has a good heart and he's experienced enough to be up to the task. He wouldn't need "to get up to speed." Obama made a safe pick with Biden that lacked drama. There's a lot to be said for steadiness and soundness in such decisions. As Clem said the other day, McCain picked his vice presidential nominee the way he gambles, he rolled the dice. Unfortunately the 72-year-old McCain was gambling with the nation's future.
Update
I like Kevin Drum's take:
And you know the part I'm really looking forward to? Sarah Palin's role in all this. I expect her to rip McCain absolutely to shreds. On background, of course, but it will be no less vicious for that. Her future, such as it is, lies with the wingnut rump of the party, and she knows what her audience wants: John McCain's blood. And lots of it. They never liked him in the first place, and I expect them to be howling for his head on a platter starting at about 8:01 pm EST on November 4th.
Update 2
Here's Politico:
With despair rising even among many of John McCain's own advisers, influential Republicans inside and outside his campaign are engaged in an intense round of blame-casting and rear-covering - much of it virtually conceding that an Election Day rout is likely.
snip
"If you really want to see what 'going negative' is in politics, just watch the back-stabbing and blame game that we're starting to see," said Mark McKinnon, the ad man who left the campaign after McCain wrapped up the GOP primary. "And there's one common theme: Everyone who wasn't part of the campaign could have done better."
"The cake is baked," agreed a former McCain strategist. "We're entering the finger-pointing and positioning-for-history part of the campaign. It's every man for himself now."
Which you see McCain and Shelley Moore Capito, who after eight years of rubberstamp support, 90 percent for McCain and 80 percent by Capito, are trying to throw George W. Bush under the bus.
McCain told the Times that the administration "let things get completely out of hand" through eight years of bad decisions about Iraq, global warming, and big spending.
Former Republican John Cole, always a good source for trying to understand the GOP, wrote:
The best thing about the upcoming circular firing squad is that once former true-believers like Nicole Wallace are screwed over royally by the wingnut fringe of the party, they will start to go all Scott McClellan. Take it from my experience- nothing hardens your resolve like being called a traitor after watching the Mayberry Machiavellis destroy your party.
Still, I'm sure the GOP's Joseph DeSoto will see a "vision" of this as a good thing for the Republican Party.
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