[rabscuttle385]

[Victoria Delsoul]

Reached by phone, a McCain campaign staffer intimately familiar with the situation said he didn’t want to speculate on what he might have motivated Schmidt and possibly others to denigrate Palin to the media, but notes, “What people were talking about was how deeply flawed Palin was, rather than how deeply flawed the handling of Palin was, which was [the leakers'] strategic goal.”

In an interview with Hugh Hewitt only two months ago, Steve Schmidt was salivating over Romney and enthusiastically praising him.:

"...in that instance, in this instance, it would be Governor Romney. I thought he was a very scary opponent looking from the other side of the table in that he was almost like a learning organism at the end. He just kept getting better week by week by week, and kept becoming stronger.... I think Mitt Romney is a candidate, is a far stronger candidate, prospectively, for the ’12 race because of his experience in ’08 than he was heading into the ’08 race."

His list though didn't include Sarah Palin's name. So I'm not surprised he, and the other Romney supporters, are attacking Sarah in order to help promote their guy and prop him up. They obviously know that Sarah will be a strong contender if she chooses to run, and they need to destroy her sooner rather than later.