Posted on 11/14/2009 10:07:41 AM PST by iowamark
Top aides to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign hit back at Sarah Palin Friday, after news reports revealed that the former vice presidential nominee’s soon-to-be-released book extensively criticizes the campaign’s press strategy – with many of its hardest shots aimed squarely at campaign manager Steve Schmidt.
Schmidt, she writes, was “grim-faced” and “cool,” and tried to pin the campaign’s troubles on what he claimed was Palin’s post-partum depression, and even went to so far as to try and dictate her diet.
According to excerpts published on the Huffington Post, Palin “took in his rotund physique and noted that he used nicotine to keep his own cognitive connections humming along.”
…
“I'm a forty-four year old, healthy, athletic woman raising five kids and governing a large state, I thought as his words faded into a background buzz. Sir, I really don't know you yet. But you've told me how to dress, what to say, who to talk to, a lot of people not to talk to, who my heroes are supposed to be and we're still losing. Now you're going to tell me what to eat?”
More generally, Palin uses the book to note the “jaded aura” of the "professional political caste" guiding McCain:
"But I did notice... funny things [about the handlers] that even Piper commented on — such as tumbling out of the bus in a pack, lighting cigarettes as they went so it looked like a walking smoke cloud with legs."
Palin also faults Schmidt for his penchant for profanity, writing that he warned her just before the vice-presidential campaign that “moderator Gwen Ifill is "going to f*** with you."
"I'm thinking, Why are you telling me this? Last minute... what's the point? And no more f-bombs around Piper, please?"
According to excerpts from copies obtained by media outlets, Palin charges that the staffers assigned to her by McCain’s team blocked her from speaking to the press aboard the campaign plane. And she asserts that former McCain communications aide Nicole Wallace ‘pushed’ her to do a September 2008 interview with CBS’s Katie Couric that resulted in serious damage to the former Alaska governor’s image.
“Aboard the campaign plane I was within twenty-five feet of reporters for hours on end. Headquarters’ strategy was that I should not go to the back of the aircraft and talk to the press,” Palin wrote, according to an excerpt that appeared Friday on the Drudge Report website. “At first this was subtle, but as the campaign wore on, [campaign aides] Tracey [Schmitt] or Tucker [Eskew] would call headquarters to request permission, and someone in DC would respond, ‘No! Absolutely not—block her if she tries to go back.’”
The excerpt also described Wallace as having aggressively “pushed for Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News” because “Katie really needed a career boost.”
Palin’s tome also pins blame on the campaign for the decision to provide her and her family with a new $150,000 wardrobe, saying she was aghast at the price of the items provided. Writing about her speech at the Republican convention, she cracks, "The kids looked great — even in a bunch of borrowed clothes."
Former McCain strategist John Weaver slammed Palin for using the book for “petty and pathetic” score-settling.
“Sarah Palin reminds me of Jimmy Stewart in the movie 'Harvey,' complete with imaginary conversations. All books like these are revisionist and self-serving, by definition,” Weaver wrote in an email to POLITICO. “But the score-settling by someone who wants to be considered a serious national player is petty and pathetic.”
“The problem wasn't who her interview was with, the problem was her interview,” he added. “Couric asked no trick questions. This just seems to be an attempt to obscure as bad a performance since Roger Mudd asked Ted Kennedy that simple question.”
Longtime McCain hand and former campaign manager Mark Salter offered a cooler response disputing Palin’s account, and told POLITICO in an email that it does not line up with his memory of events.
Explaining the campaign’s decision to limit press access as Election Day drew closer, Salter said that “after we had been criticized in the press for a lack of disciplined messaging earlier in the campaign when we provided frequent and unscheduled access to the candidate, we felt it necessary to adopt the same deliberativeness and discipline employed by our opponents and rely less on impromptu press conferences with our traveling press, and more on interviews arranged in advance so our candidates would have the same opportunity our opponents enjoyed to discuss and prepare for the interview.”
Reflecting on the first set of interviews Palin did as the GOP vice presidential nominee, Salter said that the sit downs were “discussed and agreed to by senior members of the campaign staff in consultation with the candidate” and that Wallace did not choose either the journalists or the outlets Palin spoke to.
“Nicolle Wallace, along with others, was tasked with helping the Governor prepare for some of her interviews. She did not decide which interview requests the candidates would accept. Nor was she tasked with securing the candidates’ agreement,” Salter said.
“Those decisions were made by campaign management in consultation with the candidates. Campaign management and the candidates agreed to multi-segment interviews so the Governor would maintain a presence in the media while she was in debate prep,” he added. “And to the best of my knowledge, any interviews the Governor had with the individuals she referred to were approved and arranged by the campaign management with her agreement.”
Palin did not respond to a request for comment.
This economy is only going to get worse under either Democrat or RINO policies. Only the intensive implementation of pro-American, conservative, constitutional principles will bring economic recovery. Another fabricated RINO bubble is not the solution, and the voters know this.
Yep. Well said.
My hired 401k rep used the F bomb in my office, and I kicked him out of my office and closed the account.
These people are deluded and evil.
Your headlines remind me of last Wednesday’s south park, which made fun of Glenn Beck, but the funny part was how Cartman kept making these wild accusations, but when he was called on it, he’d say “but I was just asking a question, isn’t it OK to ask the question?”
Headlines with question marks are really just the result of lazy reporters, or people who want to make accusations they had no evidence for, without being accused of lying.
Just what I would expect from McLames people. I have no doubt everything Sarah wrote about them is true.
Here’s my message for the GOP...25% of the voting public LOVES Sarah Palin. That’s 25% you must have to win in 2012. Keep on talking bad about her and you will loose....period.
Its amazing theses old political hacks are to stupid to realize this.
Because it was an extremely high honor to run as VP of the United States and he did choose her. And she recognizes that fact and has class enough to say it.
McCain was the one who picked Palin — he campaign staff seems to have never accepted her, and it is a sign of how they disrespected McCain that they dismissed his capability of picking a VP nominee.
And it doesn’t bode well for Romney if he would hook up with Schmidt. A bad campaign lead can ruin a good campaign — just look at what happened to George Allen in 2006 with that loon he had as a campaign chair.
Sarah Palin’s enemies/detractors’ psychoses about her are self-induced.
They have toxic minds to begin with.
Schmidt is obviously a s...t,. Hey, Schmidt, do you think we are stupid?
Perhaps it was an honor. Perhaps McCain, in spite of his own shortcomings, was just as horribly managed as other parts of his campaign.
McCain is history. He may even be out of the Senate by 2010.
These other behind-the-scenes backstabbing cretins are still in the game, still looking for their next opportunity to betray America. They should not get that opportunity.
Fixed...
No, nitwit, the problem was that you'd brought, with no real time to prepare, a governor to the GOP ticket who should have given her first interviews to known, friendly reporters, sort of like Obama did throughout his entire campaign, and sort of like the Dim primary candidates who refused to participate in a debate hosted by Fox.
Sarah had not spent half her life preparing for a national campaign, and the nitwit McCain campaign staff should have given her more time to review campaign issues and gradually work into interviews and appearances with known shills for the Dims.
And, Kennedy had been in the Senate and contemplating the presidency for years when Mudd asked him that question.
He’s just a typical rat bastard of the kind the GOP’s leadership trusts implicitly... as opposed to its base voters, for whom it has nothing but contempt, even while they continue to mail fund-raising letters to those voters, talking tough but meaning squat.
It was President Bush Sr. who came up with the term “voodoo economics”. The RINOs and Republican establishment said that Reagan was too stupid, old, and proabably even “radioctive” to win the presidency. Reagan had a spark; it is the same spark many of us see in Sarah Palin. The goodness shines through and I believe that she will be the one to throw Obama out on his behind. Shame on McCain’s former campaign staffers... run them out of town on a rail or let the Dems have them.
Perhaps what is pathetic are the losers from McCain's failed campaign.
Newsweek, the AP, and now McCain's campaign managers are hysterical worried about Palin's success.
I'll take Ms. Palin's word for it.
I wish like hell that Palin had been at the top of the ticket. We wouldnt have a kenyan as prez now.
No surprise that the McCain crew were crude, overweight, chainsmoking losers.
McCain himself is a loser. If he didn’t have a wealthy second wife he wouldn’t even have been a candidate.
I think the McCain camp has the complete hold on petty and pathetic.
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