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I think Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue,” said nothing to put McCain as the cause of her sabotage. It was Schmidt who had ultimate control over the “B Team.” He waged so much control over Sarah Palin, it destroyed her positive contribution to the campaign. Schmidt did nothing to destroy the attacks against her. The prank call Sahah took from a impostor of French President Nicolas Sarkosy, was a good example. It was a prank that even Schmidt would have fell for. But he used it as his final straw: “As Schmidt’s rant blazed on, I pictured cell towers between D.C. and Florida bursting into flame.” It was the final event that revealed Schmidt’s hyper efforts to control Sarah Palin was a sign of his own incompetent management style. Soon afterwards, her team staffer, Jason Recher, announces that, “Someone from headquarters was calling to tell the B Team to “put her back in the truck!” I am sure it came from Schmidt who blamed everything that went wrong on Sarah Palin and when she needed his support, did nothing.

If Sarah Palin were the VP pick for someone like Donald Trump, The campaign challenges would have been handled. Sarah’s attacks would have been countered. She would have attracted huge rallies and guaranteed a landslide victory.

After the 2008 campaign, Palin and McCain seemed to have had the good sense to avoid taking shots at each other. As to the main point, why would Schmidt have risked a lucrative, prized role in McCain's campaign and his career in GOP consulting to torpedo Palin during the campaign unless it was at McCain's initiative?

There are standard, well-tested tactics for coping with VP candidate defects: intense coaching; limiting exposure to the news media; well-designed and controlled campaign events that put the candidate in a good light; one or more keepers who are always with the candidate to keep them on track; and strong support from the campaign and the top of the ticket. Why weren't these approaches used with Palin?

I think that the vain, jealous, and mercurial McCain secretly turned on Palin and set Schmidt the task of tearing her down. I am unaware of any postelection criticism from McCain as what Schmidt and Nicole Wallace did to Palin.