Yes, I know that, but in this particular instance, I think Politico and the other lib media sources were used as razor sharp weapons by the McCain/Bush/Romney clique on the Straight Talk Express to hurt Governor Palin once it realized that she was going to completely overshadow McCain and force him to veer right when he wanted to go left. In short, they had a togress by the tail, and needed to defang her, but not do so in way that would immediately fall back on McCain.
You need to think outside the box about this kind of stuff and understand how these political in-fighters operate, using outlets like Politico to give themselves plausible deniability when doing their dirty work.