Wow, some people in the McCain campaign didn't have the campaign's best interests at heart? Since the McCain campaign tells us the other side is against America, that must mean that even some of McCain's closest advisers are are AGAINST AMERICA!! No wonder they are losing, this enormous conspiracy to undermine America has even infiltrated the McCain campaign.

On a more serious note, I think Noam has it right. Palin was so woefully unready to be a VP candidate that there was no way to hide her shortcomings.

Silk purse from Saks Fifth Avenue that failed to impress only 'cause it was never taken outta the box?

Nah.

Sow's ear (but with some mighty fine diamond earrings from Neiman-Marcus).

True.  It's quite amusing that they pretend that Palin's been mismanaged.  Did they tell her it was best if she never googled "role of the VP"?  Did they encourage her to make an ass out of herself on national television - repeatedly?  When you're well-informed and steady, there are no "gotcha" questions - just tough interviews where you have to tread carefully.

The truth is that we have seen Palin for what she is and no amount of management could have provided her with intelligence or wisdom or insight.  The right wing continues to attempt to sell us piles of horseshit  and convince us that if we think it stinks it's because our olfactory receptors are defective (or - worse - un-American).

That's how I feel about the Iraq war, and also the Clinton campaign. flaw/conceptionwise. But then both those things, like the Palin thing, were screwed up even further by the brilliant minds that conceived them in the first place.

It's amazing how much the fingerpointing and off-the-record, backstabbing interviews are starting to sound like the final weeks of the Clinton campaign.

Penn = Schmidt.

Wolfson = Wallace.

McCain = Hillary.

Palin (in her rogue performance) = Bill.

It's deja vu all over again!

I really don't remember the Dole campaign sinking into a McCainish rat hole of finger pointing or recriminations one week before the elections. Same for Mondale, who at this time, had no hope of victory.

Something about the 2008 GOP really makes my skin crawl. It is almost as if this bedraggled collection of supply sides loons, flat earthers, and haters have no moral or ethical compass. I cannot imagine the GOP of my youth - Ike, Rockefeller, Ford, even Reagan - engaging in these kinds of antics Hell, even Nixon, who defined executive corruption, waited until after the votes were in to go postal in 62.

Naw, this GOP, like Charles Foster Kane, deserve this ass kicking and as Big Jim Geddes said, maybe a few more to really learn a lesson.

I am not suggesting that they will go the way of the Whigs - which was on the lips of almost every Repub when speaking about the Democrats in 04 - but they may go at least another election cycle before they start to regroup. And as political cycles go, they will regroup. But not for a while is my guess.

I don't know, Dr. Frankenstein or the wizard of Oz could have done it, by giving her a brain.

BHLnyc, I like to call it the Obama zone, where other campaigns lose their minds.

Let us not forget the sex kitten actually winked, f-ing winked at the camera during her one and only debate. Unbelievable. She flirted during a debate. The woman is trash, a media whore who has no respect for the office she seeks. I gotta imagine her wink will go down in history as one of the most tasteless and crass events of any debate at such a high level.

Anything else, Bush I looking at his watch, Nixon's five o´clock shadow, McCain's angry glare, none of it comes close to our very own sex kitten.

Cookie, I voted for Kean and Whitman in NJ. In my mind Dems were best in the Legislature, and Republicans best managing the state. A kind of mommy and daddy theory of gov't. Now it is mommy vs. crazy, batshit uncle.