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As reality began to sink in to the losing McCain presidential campaign in late October 2008, a senior communications adviser, Brian Jones, sent out a comprehensive strategic memo seeking to protect campaign manager Steve Schmidt‘s reputation, the central figure in the HBO political drama Game Change, Politico’s Maggie Haberman reports. “A week out from the election, named and unnamed sources are beginning to pin some of the blame for McCain’s likely defeat on Steve Schmidt,” Jones wrote in the memo. “Thankfully, and rightfully so, some members of the political punditry are already coming to his defense (Rove, McKinnon, Scarborough), however...

There is a new street art poster that’s being emailed around and will no doubt eventually be spotted on a street corner near you. It’s a gritty black and white image of Andrew Breitbart looking both battle-worn and ever vigilant with the caption: “BREITBART IS HERE.” Those three words express the instant connection many of us feel for our fallen friend. They express our identification with him, and our need to continue his fight for the good of our republic. With the death of Breitbart, the conservative movement didn’t just lose a General – we lost an entire Special Forces...

Ten days before the 2008 presidential election, as blame was beginning to be laid out for John McCain’s “likely defeat,” a top communications adviser to the campaign wrote a detailed strategy memo focused on how to preserve the reputation of another key adviser, Steve Schmidt, POLITICO has learned. *** The protective maneuver sheds more light on the final days of the 2008 campaign, a period of low morale marked by tensions between the Palin and McCain camps and the expectation of defeat. *** “Thankfully, and rightfully so, some members of the political punditry are already coming his defense (Rove, McKinnon,...

Sarah Palin shot back at the Obama reelection campaign this week after it used footage of her in a fundraising video. "I’m not running for any office, but I’m more than happy to accept the dubious honor of being Barack Obama’s 'enemy of the week' if that includes the opportunity to debate him on the issues Americans are actually concerned about," Palin wrote in a note on her Facebook page, posted late Monday. Palin was responding to a Web video fundraising for Obama that uses recent footage of Palin criticizing the president. Palin also offered a challenge to Obama. "I’m...

Audio from Marks show this evening perfectly summing up who Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace are. They earn their living, since losing the McCain campaign, trashing Sarah Palin 24/7. Runs about 4 minutes.

On the tail of Game Change‘s premiere on HBO, former McCain/Palin adviser Nicolle Wallace, prominently featured in the film, visited Rachel Maddow tonight to expand upon the lessons of the 2008 campaign, and made clear that she felt fairly guilty about working to make someone “fundamentally unprepared and unsuited for the job” the Vice President of the United States. Wallace noted that she was still in shock as to “how close we came to having somebody a heartbeat away from the presidency so fundamentally unprepared and unsuited for the job,” adding that, while she thought tossing around the term “PTSD”...

Back Stab Sarah Palin As Portrayed By Her Disloyal Staff. MAR 19, 2012, VOL. 17, NO. 26 • BY JOHN PODHORETZ Nicolle Wallace was the onetime consultant to CBS News and media aide to George W. Bush who was assigned to work with Sarah Palin after the Alaska governor was chosen as John McCain’s running mate. It was Wallace who assured the McCain campaign that her dear friend Katie Couric, a committed liberal with a history of interviewing Republicans and conservatives in a quietly nasty way, was the right journalist to conduct a major early interview with the extremely conservative...

Well, it is both but it started with Team Romney. They started the attacks as early as the convention. It wasn’t until later on that Team Rove saw it as an avenue to also clear the path for Jeb. Team Romney? or is it Team Rove/Bush? With the primary season in full swing and the HBO movie coming out, we have gotten a very clear view of how each candidate conducts their campaigns. There is only ONE candidate who has a clear MO of nasty, dishonest attacks and rumors using a tactic that overwhelms their opponents to not just have...

Thanks to some remarkable reporting from Big Hollywood, it has become increasingly clear the upcoming HBO movie "Game Change" is less a political melodrama than an all-out attempt to destroy the person and reputation of Sarah Palin. The movie is based on a poorly researched book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, and it was criticized at the time of its publication by Howard Kurtz, then a media reporter for the Washington Post, and the New York Times for its overreliance on unsourced "deep background" interviews that were difficult to verify. Two of those sources have been revealed, according to...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is one of Andrew Breitbart's pieces. And it's actually an interesting question, and it was also raised by Byron York at the DC Examiner a couple of days ago, might have been yesterday or the night before last. Remember the book Game Change? Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, two reporters followed both presidential campaigns in 2008. They learned a whole bunch of stuff during the campaign, but they didn't report a lot of it. CBS Tampa: "Florida Drivers Shelling Out Nearly $6 A Gallon At Some Gas Stations -- According to GasBuddy.com, motorists are shelling out...

The circling of wagons against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been quite a spectacle. Establishment dinosaurs like former Sen. Bob Dole, the Reaganite grande dame Peggy Noonan, the moderate agoniste David Frum, the reclusive Web guerrilla Matt Drudge, even the flame-throwing Ann Coulter—rarely do you see such a diverse array of establishment and movement conservatives in such united opposition to someone who's at least nominally conservative. Myself, I'd rather see former Gov. Mitt Romney crushed under those wagon wheels. And so, apparently, does former Gov. Sarah Palin. In an interview with Fox News Business Network, Palin opined: "Look at...

We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent. We will look back on this week and realize that something changed. I have given numerous interviews wherein I espoused the benefits of thorough vetting during aggressive contested primary elections, but this week’s tactics aren’t what I meant. Those who claim allegiance to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment should stop and...

On the heels of Newt Gingrich’s trouncing of Mitt Romney in the South Carolina primary, Republican Party brass are privately expressing deep concerns that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s high unfavorable rating in national polls could prove catastrophic to the so-called “down ballot”–the House and Senate races under the presidential race–and may even threaten the Republican Party’s control of the House of Representatives...

Sarah Palin’s husband is endorsing Newt Gingrich for president, Todd Palin told ABC News today. But Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and John McCain’s 2008 Republican running mate, has yet to decide “who is best able to go up against Barack Obama,” Todd Palin said. Palin said he has not spoken to Gingrich or anyone from the former House speaker’s campaign. But he said he respects Gingrich for what he went through in the 1990s and compared that scrutiny in public life to what Sarah Palin went through during her run for the vice presidency.

GOP political consultant Steve Schmidt, one of the toughest guys in the business and the guru behind the 2008 John McCain presidential campaign, said that early polls suggest Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann are likely no longer “plausible” candidates after tonight. And he told MSNBC it increasingly looks like former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum “may well emerge as the chief alternative to Mitt Romney.” With Santorum showing strong in early exit polls, Schmidt — an MSNBC analyst — told the network moments ago that Santorum is “going to have to make a lot of decisions very quickly if he comes...

Tuesday, January 3, 2012 Editorial by John Ziegler Sarah Palin: Selfish, Hypocritical, Sellout 1/3/2012 As surreal as it may be, after spending over two years and several thousand dollars defending Sarah Palin at great personal cost, I now find myself in the bizarre position (three years to the day from starting the journey to Wasilla to do the interview of record on her 2008 VP run) of being perhaps the only conservative commentator willing to point out that Palin has now clearly revealed herself to be a selfish, hypocritical, sellout. While she was doing her presidential tease (an act that...

COMMENTARY | The ABC News "20 20" special with Diane Sawyer that chronicled the struggle of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to regain her faculties after a brain injury as the result of a shooting in January was-for the most part-heart-warming and inspirational. The documentary, which also contained the first public interview with Giffords since the shooting, was ruined by a gratuitous attack on tea party opponents of health care reform and on Sarah Palin toward the end of the one-hour special. A short segment showed Giffords confronting an angry crowd of constituents at a town hall meeting. Palin was shown briefly,...

Sarah Palin wasn’t ever really going to run for president, was she? That’s Donald Craig Mitchell’s guess. In an Op-Ed that discusses Palin’s decision not to run, Mitchell says she’s long prioritized her celebrity career over her commitment to public office, reminding us of Palin’s lucrative deals that followed after she quit as Alaska’s governor, including a seven-figure contract with Fox News. After three years of tweeting, hinting and eyelash-batting, on Wednesday Sarah Palin announced that she was not running for president. Her Facebook friends are disappointed. But for Sarah-watchers in Alaska like me, the announcement was long expected, old...

Ever since the National Enquirer leaked salacious details from The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin before the book was published, author Joe McGinniss has been embroiled in controversy. First, the tabloid revealed his book’s more lurid accusations against Ms. Palin: An alleged affair with her husband’s business partner, a pre-marital sexual encounter with former NBA player Glen Rice and snorting cocaine. Then The New York Times said Mr. McGinniss used his summer living next door to the Palins in Alaska to “chase caustic, unsubstantiated gossip.”

"What is the most damning allegation against me? 'Sarah Palin doesn't deserve to be President because before she was married she has sex with a black man?' What's funnier is that liberals think they should be congratulated for crossing the color line."