Free Republic

PHOENIX (AP) — John McCain's daughter says in a new book released Tuesday that Sarah Palin brought drama, stress and uncertainty to her father's failed bid for the presidency in 2008, but she doesn't blame the vice presidential nominee for losing the race. (snip) In her book, released by Hyperion, Meghan McCain shows an itch to adopt her father's persona as a "maverick" delivering "straight talk."She calls religious conservatives the "intolerant far right," evoking her father's famous remark a decade ago that GOP religious leaders were "agents of intolerance." The elder McCain has since backed off from those statements. (snip)...

(CNN) — John McCain’s general election campaign began as “the strategic equivalent of throwing a football through a tire at 50 yards” – and was doomed weeks before Election Day, his former chief strategist said Thursday. “We were running a campaign under extra difficult circumstances — the state of the Republican Party, the president’s unpopularity, the economy — a lot of issues that were not John McCain’s fault, but were John McCain’s problem in this race,” Schmidt told an audience at the University of Delaware, according to Politico. “When Lehman Brothers collapsed in the fall I knew pretty much right...