I know what you mean by bitterness. Just this week, when the GOP seemed to go into ballistic-level defense of Ann Romney (which was an entirely good, commendable and proper course of action), I couldn’t help but contrast this to the way the GOP never came to the defense of Palin or her family throughout the most unprecedentedly outlandish attacks, from coordinated Dem attempts to bankrupt her and her family to the media trying to accuse her of complicity in the mass-murder in Tucson. Where the hell was her ‘own’ Party throughout this and beyond?
Sure makes it seem as though there is a different set of rules if one is part of the “elite” GOP-establishment crowd, versus a conservative/outsider/reformer... the latter gets treated like worthless trash. Really altered my entire view of the Republican Party, in a most negative way, after decades of voting exclusively GOP. Total watershed situation for me, these past four years.
It also just so happens everyone Romney and his team have gone dirty nasty on politically has been female: first muscling a female primary opponent out of one race, then the (granted, unpopular) sitting female GOP guv out of another, then almost blowing it against the female Democrat guv candidate by himself being nastily condescending, then cynically adding a female lt. guv to his ticket but shutting her out of actual governance, and of course all of what he had his henchmen do to Palin starting in ‘08.
Romney does have a major vulnerability in his attitude toward women, and that is something that Obama’s team will poke and prod at until he trips up and displays it through his own inartfulness.
The GOP didn’t come to the defense of Sarah Palin and the Palin family BECAUSE Mitt Romney was the source of much of the attacks.