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Some conservatives speak volumes as they try to pillory Steve Schmidt, the strategist who helped run John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign and lately has been getting attention thanks to Woody Harrelson's portrayal of him in the movie, "Game Change."Pay a visit to Conservatives4Palin.com. There, you'll find everything critical about Schmidt. There's a link to a Washington Times piece that denounces him as "a longtime loser," and a broadcast by an angry New York-based radio talk show host, Mark Levin. "Steve you're quite the punk. You really are a punk," Levin said, incensed that Schmidt would dare to belittle McCain's vice...

Ten days before the 2008 presidential election, as blame was beginning to be laid out for John McCain’s “likely defeat,” a top communications adviser to the campaign wrote a detailed strategy memo focused on how to preserve the reputation of another key adviser, Steve Schmidt, POLITICO has learned. *** The protective maneuver sheds more light on the final days of the 2008 campaign, a period of low morale marked by tensions between the Palin and McCain camps and the expectation of defeat. *** “Thankfully, and rightfully so, some members of the political punditry are already coming his defense (Rove, McKinnon,...

David Plouffe's days of spending time with his family may be nearing an end again. His president may need him in his 2012 re-election campaign. Plouffe, who was the manager of Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, says Obama hasn't yet given a thought to winning a second term, and that the president hasn't started to build the massive campaign machinery he'll need to compete against whoever the Republicans nominate. "I can tell you that the president is not concerned with his reelection," Plouffe writes in the new paperback version of his book on the 2008 election, The Audacity to Win. "We...

I had never met Steve Schmidt and only knew him through the media. When I found myself seated at the former McCain campaign manager's table at a Washington dinner hosted by The Week magazine, it was like a flashback to the 2008 campaign. Schmidt is instantly recognizable with his trademark shaved head, his bulldog physique, and the restless intensity that marks him as a political operative of the first order. He had spent 10 weeks trying to mold Sarah Palin into a plausible national candidate, and when the campaign ended, he assessed her shortcomings, as she did his, in what...

Steve Schmidt spent ten weeks building Sarah Palin up and the two of them have spent a good part of the last 14 months tearing each other down. A losing campaign always brings out the knives, but usually they are wielded in the shadows. The pure spectacle of a former campaign strategist going on national television to trash the candidate whose image he once stage-managed – as Schmidt did Sunday on “60 Minutes” - is virtually unprecedented. Among Washington operatives the response to Schmidt ranges from quiet admiration for telling uncomfortable truths to mystification that he and Palin would belabor...

Fresh details emerged today of the backroom dramas as Sarah Palin alarmed her campaign managers with a string of gaffes during her run for vice-president in 2008. Race of a Lifetime, a new book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin which is serialised in The Times this week, reveals that advisers to John McCain were taken aback by how little Mrs Palin knew about politics and history when she was confirmed as Mr McCain's Republican running mate after a cursory, 12-hour selection process. "You guys have a lot of work to do," Steve Schmidt, Mr McCain's campaign chief, is said...

Here is video of former McCain Campaign Chief Strategist Steve Schmidt on "60 Minutes" last night, where he claims McCain decided to choose Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate at the last minute as a replacement for preferred choice Sen. Joe Lieberman. Schmidt says the decision was made late Sunday night just before the beginning of the Republican National Convention in 2008 as they sat around a table and ate "deep fried burritos." Schmidt essentially trashes Palin in the interview, saying she knew little about Foreign Policy and other issues. He did say she was a "quick study." He...

As cynical as I have become about the news media, even I never thought I would see the day where "60 Minutes" provided far more comedy than "Saturday Night Live," but Sunday’s edition of the formerly respected news magazine gave the educated viewer infinitely more laughs than SNL delivered (although Charles Barkley’s pathetic performance may have still somehow been even worse than that of Anderson Cooper). Specifically I am referring to the segment that was allegedly devoted to the new book “Game Change” about the 2008 Presidential election. Quite simply, (partly because it dealt with subjects about which I have...

Anyone see the hit piece on Palin? I can't believe what I heard/saw.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sarah Palin believed that Sen. John McCain chose her to be his running mate in 2008 because of "God's plan," according to a top political strategist in the Arizona Republican's campaign. In an interview with the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes," Steve Schmidt described Palin as "very calm—nonplussed" after McCain met with her at his Arizona ranch just before putting her on the Republican ticket. McCain had planned to name Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., as his vice presidential choice until word leaked, sparking what Schmidt called political blowback over picking the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee. Schmidt...

Writing about Sarah Palin in Newsweek last month, I pointed out the crude way in which she tried to Teflon-ize herself when allegations of weird political extremism were made against her. Thus, she had once gone to a Pat Buchanan rally wearing a pro-Buchanan button, but only because she thought it was the polite thing to do. She and her husband had both attended meetings of the Alaskan Independence Party—he as a member—but its name, she later tried to claim, only meant "independent." (The AIP is a straightforward secessionist party.) She didn't disbelieve all the evidence for evolution, only some...

That is not a smear but a documented fact. Schmidt managed the McCain for President campaign. McCain, as you will recall, lost to Barack Obama in the 2008 election. Schmidt and his candidate bungled the campaign so badly that an untested, smooth-talking, America-bashing dilettante now occupies the White House as Commander-in-Chief. Great job, guys! Like a diligent virus, Schmidt refuses to leave the body politic. He is back again to call Sarah Palin's new book "total fiction." Interesting. The list of Schmidt's disastrous campaign decisions is too long to completely document here. But we conservatives will long remember the propping...

Be afraid, be very afraid of John McCain's presidential campaign manager, Steve Schmidt who has been bashing conservative talk radio, and Christians, along with Sarah Palin ever since 2008. Despite his Mr. Clean looks, I felt like taking a shower after hearing only a few minutes of his monotonous speech on CSPAN TV last week. No wonder the honorable John McCain lost the presidency, having been handled by a guy who began his political career by helping Bill Bradley, was complimented by the NY Times, honors the Log Cabin Republicans (I don't want to know what they do with their...

Looks like there’s at least one high-profile Republican who won’t be voting for Sarah Palin should she run in 2012. Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s top political strategist in 2008, told a forum in Washington today that nominating Palin as the party’s next presidential nominee would be “catastrophic” for Republicans. “I think that she has talents, but my honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate,” Schmidt said. “In fact, were she to be the nominee, we would have a catastrophic election result.”