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I have never understood the Sarah Palin attraction. Sorry. I just don’t I am a die-hard conservative, but Sarah Palin does not do it for me. Never did. When she was first announced as John McCain’s running mate, I cringed, but then reluctantly understood. This was a political “Hail Mary” pass for the McCain campaign. Honestly, what could the poor man do from where he stood in the polls and in the modern American environment in which he was nominated? Answer: apparently little, aside from dumbing himself down to the political environment of the times—i.e., try to match the idiocy...

Sarah Palin finally dishes up the goods on the failed Campaign. I tend not to follow political events that have no bearing on me or the future of the country. So I have pretty much ignored the flap between Palin and McCain until now. But I will weigh in on some key issues that I think are relevant and why I believe McCain and his political strategist Steve Schmidt need to shut the hell up. McCain lost and will no longer lead this country in any way shape or form. Palin may still and will be a force in this...

Before Sarah Palin's highly-anticipated book, "Going Rogue," goes on sale this week, it has already generated controversy, skepticism and blowback. In portions that have been leaked in advance, and in interviews Palin has given in advance of the book's debut Tuesday, the former Alaska governor criticized senior aides to her 2008 running mate John McCain, which prompted retaliation from McCain's campaign staff — some speaking on the record, some anonymously. Of Palin's book, Steven Schmidt, McCain's chief strategist, told CBS News, "It's fiction, and it's not true." "This is Sarah Palin's turn to get even, as it were," said CBS...

WASHINGTON (CNN) - John McCain's former presidential campaign manager Steve Schmidt is the latest McCain adviser to cry foul over accusations Sarah Palin has penned in her yet to be released memoir "Going Rogue." Excerpts obtained by The Huffington Post characterize Schmidt in an unfavorable light, particularly in reference to the prank phone call Palin received from someone pretending to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "Right away, the phones started ringing," Palin writes. "One of the first calls was Schmidt, and the force of his screaming blew my hair back. 'How can anyone be so stupid?! Why would the president...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A former senior campaign adviser to John McCain(who would only speak on the condition of anonymity)is rejecting Sarah Palin’s claim that she was billed for the costs of vetting her before she was selected as the Republican vice presidential nominee.

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...

She's poised to become the best-selling author in the United States, has a devoted base of conservative supporters and is considered a front-runner to lead the Republicans into the next election in 2012 - and yet key party strategists are tormented by the popularity of Sarah Palin. The very notion of a Palin candidacy has been derided in recent days by some of the brightest minds in the Republican party even as the former governor of Alaska outlines her policies on Afghanistan, energy and other issues of national importance. "Were she to be the nominee, we could have a catastrophic...

Just off the CNN Political Ticker: Sarah Palin is remaining silent about a sharp jab directed at her Friday by former John McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt, who predicted that a potential Palin presidential bid in 2012 would be "catastrophic." A spokeswoman for the former Alaska governor said Palin is holding her fire until her new book is released next month. "The governor will write about all of this in her book," Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton said in an e-mail, referring to the internal fighting that marred the final weeks of McCain's president bid. "There will be plenty of time...

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 Sarah Palin begins to build her network of advisors Politico's Ben Smith reports: Randy Scheunemann, has emerged as an advisor to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as she attempts to build a serious public profile and begins to build a network of aides and advisors typical of a national politician. Scheunemann confirmed this evening that he's with Palin in Hong Kong, where she is delivering a paid speech at a conference hosted by the brokerage house CLSA, which has in the past heard keynotes from Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Rich Lowry recounts how the McCain...

People like John McCain and others who have been part of the self-absorbed, navel-gazing and corrupt Washington environment for a quarter century no doubt resent someone not "of them." But it is indeed odd when Sarah Palin, a bright, shining light for conservatives remains the prime target of the existing machine, while Mark Sanford and other hypocritical liars are serenaded as getting a raw deal by the very public daughter of a defacto leader of the party. For some reason, Meghan McCain, writing in The Daily Beast, seems to think adulterous politicians, like South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, should be...

Just spoke to a consultant plugged in with a non-McCain Republican presidential candidate from 2008. His first words: “Steve Schmidt wins.” “I don’t think she’s toast (for future office). But this makes it more difficult. I’m trying to think of a candidate who launched a serious national bid after one term or less*… I guess the last one would be Romney, and he had done one full term.” On the theory that the scrutiny of her children was the straw that broke the camel's back, the consultant said, “From the interaction I’ve had with her, that would make some sense.”...

Internal campaign e-mails exchanged three weeks before Election Day offer a rare look at just how frustrated then Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin had become with the manner in which top McCain campaign aides were handling her candidacy. The e-mails, obtained exclusively, also highlight the power struggle and thinly veiled acrimony that pervaded the relationship between Palin and the campaign's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt. The episode in question began when an investigative report published on the left-leaning Web site Salon.com raised questions about Palin's relationship with members of the Alaska Independence Party (AIP) when she was mayor of Wasilla....

Alaskan Governor and GOP 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin may be nice looking, but she sure wasn’t a very good candidate is the bottom line of Vanity Fair’s 9,920-word profile about her released Tuesday. The comments about her beauty weren't entirely complimentary, either. Vanity Fair writer Todd S. Purdum said her looks probably hurt her as much it helped win voters during the campaign. The brunt of his article, the notion that she was never suited to run nationally, relied heavily on unattributed quotes from McCain campaign staffers who felt she wasn’t up to snuff and refused properly study...

Alaska's lipstick-wearing pit-bull is a "Little Shop of Horrors." That's how one longtime friend and campaign trail companion of John McCain, the vanquished 2008 GOP presidential nominee, described veep nominee Sarah Palin. In an expansive story in the August edition of Vanity Fair, a slew of senior members of McCain's campaign team told reporter Todd S. Purdum that they suffer a kind of survivor's guilt following the 2008 presidential election.

It was only five years ago that opposition to gay marriage was so strong that Republicans explicitly turned to the issue as a way to energize conservative voters. Yet today, as the party contemplates the task of rebuilding itself, some Republicans say the issue of gay marriage may be turning into more of a hindrance than a help. The fact that a run of states have legalized gay marriage in recent months — either by court decision or by legislative action — with little backlash is only one indication of how public attitudes about this subject appear to be changing....

A handful of readers took note of this passage in my story on Steve Schmidt's and David Plouffe's appearance in Delaware last week: [Schmidt] explained his decision to deny Palin an election night speech as a nod to the fact that the concession is a “singular moment” in American public life. “It begins the process by which power is transferred peacefully,” he said. Asked blogger DougJ: "Is Schmidt implying that Palin would have given an incendiary speech that would have, in some small way, disrupted the peaceful transfer of power?" I hadn't really heard it that way, but it seemed...

10:49 a.m., April 24, 2009----While their political opinions may differ, University of Delaware alumni David Plouffe and Steve Schmidt, the two men who helped run the opposing campaigns for the 2008 presidential election, agree that President Barack Obama was a once-in-a-generation candidate and that young people have become an important part of the American political process. Schmidt, who led the Republican campaign of U.S. Sen. John McCain, and Plouffe, who led the Democratic campaign of Obama, discussed their experiences with candor and humor before an audience of about 500 people on Thursday, April 23, in Clayton Hall. The discussion was...

(snip) ...... “It was communicated back to us very clearly from within the party that not only was Senator Lieberman not acceptable, but any pro-choice nominee was not acceptable, [and] it would lead to a floor fight at the convention with an alternate nominee for vice president put into play. “Blowing up the party wasn’t one of the menu items of things that were going to improve our situation,” he said. Schmidt also criticized his party’s political performance in the early days of the Obama presidency. “As a matter of reality, in the first 100 days, [the Republican Party] has...

(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...

LOG CABIN REPUBLICANS 2009 National Convention & Liberty Education Forum National Symposium Steve Schmidt, McCain Campaign Senior Adviser and Schwarzenegger Campaign Manager will share his thoughts on the 2008 election and analyze how the Republican Party can win again.

National Organization for Marriage to Steve Schmidt: 'Losing Elections Does Not Make You an Expert on Gay Marriage' PRINCETON, NJ, April 17 /Christian Newswire/ -- Today, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) responded to Steve Schmidt on CNN: "Steve Schmidt's first national TV address this week is part of a coordinated campaign to manufacture a message point: Americans are ready to give up on the marriage issue. I'm not worried about this press spin, because the people who believe it are going to wake up to find the political landscape is very different than they imagine," said Brian Brown, executive...

McCain Strategist Warns GOP Risks Becoming 'Religious Party' Steve Schmidt urges Republicans to begin voicing more support for civil unions and gay rights. FOXNews.com Friday, April 17, 2009 Steve Schmidt, former top adviser to John McCain during the presidential campaign, is urging Republicans to shift their views on gay marriage. (AP Photo) John McCain's top adviser from the presidential campaign urged fellow Republicans on Friday to warm up to gay rights and warned that the GOP risks becoming the "religious party" with its opposition to same-sex marriage. Steve Schmidt, in his first political appearance since the election, spoke at the...

McCain Strategist Warns GOP Risks Becoming 'Religious Party' Steve Schmidt urges Republicans to begin voicing more support for civil unions and gay rights. FOXNews.com Friday, April 17, 2009 John McCain's top adviser from the presidential campaign urged fellow Republicans on Friday to warm up to gay rights and warned that the GOP risks becoming the "religious party" with its opposition to same-sex marriage. Steve Schmidt, in his first political appearance since the election, spoke at the Washington, D.C., convention for the Log Cabin Republicans -- a grassroots group for gay and lesbian Republicans. He urged Republicans, in the near-term, to...

Washington (CNN) - Steve Schmidt, a key architect of John McCain's presidential campaign, is making his first public return to Washington a bold one. Schmidt will use a speech Friday to Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group, to urge conservative Republicans to drop their opposition to same-sex marriage, CNN has learned. "There is a sound conservative argument to be made for same-sex marriage," Schmidt will say, according to speech excerpts obtained by CNN. "I believe conservatives, more than liberals, insist that rights come with responsibilities. No other exercise of one's liberty comes with greater responsibilities than marriage."

(CNN) – Log Cabin Republicans are getting some support from the McCain family. Cindy and Meghan McCain will make an appearance at the gay rights organization's four day convention in Washington, which kicks off Thursday night. "Of all the causes I believe in and speak publicly about, this is one of the ones closest to my heart," Meghan McCain, a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage, wrote in the Daily Beast this week. "If the Republican Party has any hope of gaining substantial support from a wider, younger base, we need to get past our anti-gay rhetoric." Steve Schmidt, former senior...

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John McCain's daughter, Meghan McCain, 24, has agreed to headline the annual convention of the Log Cabin Republicans, a GOP group which advocates on behalf of gays and lesbians. "Her willingness to reach out to organizations like ours shows her commitment to growing the Republican Party," Log Cabin convention manager Christian Berle told ABC News. "The title of Meghan McCain's speech is 'Winning the Next Generation -- How can the Republican Party attract more young voters.'" Joining Meghan McCain at the conference will be Steve Schmidt, her father's top 2008 strategist. The topic of Schmidt's address is "Moving Forward." The...

It isn't really clear if a candidate for Governor can suffer a "significant campaign setback" if they aren't even a candidate yet, but that is what has happened to ersatz Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, the former CEO of eBay who, relatively new to the GOP, has had high profile roles with the Presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney (with whom she was once a co-worker) and Senator John McCain - with the confirmation that her top two most prominent advisors are no longer engaged professionally on Whitman's behalf. --snip-- For most of this year, Whitman has been rumored to be looking...

Former Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, who served as both Democratic foil and dealmaker with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has joined the high-powered public relations firm whose California office is currently occupied by Schwarzenegger's former campaign manager and communications director. Núñez, a Los Angeles Democrat, will be the newest partner and co-chair of Mercury Public Affairs, LLC, a political firm with offices in seven cities across the country, according to a letter he has sent to supporters. Steve Schmidt, who was the architect of Schwarzenegger's reelection campaign, and Adam Mendelsohn, the governor's former communications director and deputy chief of staff, are the...

McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt explains that it's not his fault: The moment that I will look back at as the moment deep in my gut that I knew, was September 29, when I was flying on a plane with Governor Palin to Sedona for debate prep, watching the split screen on the TVs . . . and it showed the stock market down seven, eight hundred points; it showed the Congress voting down the bailout package on the other side, and then, House Republicans went out and told the world that the reason that they voted against this legislation,...

News has been circulating around GOP insiders for weeks that McCain campaign honchos Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt were planning to blame Sarah Palin for McCain’s loss. This was expected to be an effort to punt the blame for their own failures to the side of the ticket that was most popular with the base, attracted the largest rally crowds, and scared the living bejeepers out of the opposing party.

Michelle Malkin has set up a site where we can leave messages of support for Sarah Palin. I encourage you to visit and leave some kind words for a wonderful woman and great conservative. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/thank-you-sarah-palin

Even as John McCain and Sarah Palin scramble to close the gap in the final days of the 2008 election, stirrings of a Palin insurgency are complicating the campaign's already-tense internal dynamics. Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the...

Steve Schmidt and his colleagues took John McCain further than he had any reasonable right to, given the political climate. The most popular parlor game in Washington, D.C., these days is the bludgeoning of the McCain campaign. It started with Bill Kristol’s column in The New York Times recently in which he wrote, “It’s time to fire the campaign. What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over.” Right. That would have worked out well, I’m sure. One of the physical laws of politics is that if your campaign wins, you’re a genius. If you lose,...

John McCain’s chief strategist Steve Schmidt said Monday that the campaign is “well within striking distance” of Barack Obama. “We are running in a very difficult political environment, that’s not a secret to anybody that’s out there,” Schmidt said during an interview on National Public Radio. “I believe in this race we are approximately six points behind. There’s a lot of the media right now that is writing Senator McCain off for the third or fourth time this year. That means we have ‘em just where we want ‘em in this race.” “We have an ability to close that distance...

The New York Times and John McCain really don't seem to like each other all that well and it appears the disagreement may have spilled over into a campaign plane ban for Times columnist Maureen Dowd. McCain Campaign chief Steve Schmidt scalded the New York Times just last week in a conference call where he ripped the paper and screamed bias. "Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization," Schmidt said. "This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for...

-snip- With respect to his campaign, McCain needs to liberate his running mate from the former Bush aides brought in to handle her — aides who seem to have succeeded in importing to the Palin campaign the trademark defensive crouch of the Bush White House. McCain picked Sarah Palin in part because she’s a talented politician and communicator. He needs to free her to use her political talents and to communicate in her own voice. I’m told McCain recently expressed unhappiness with his staff’s handling of Palin. On Sunday he dispatched his top aides Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis to...

The summer of 2008 has reminded us that events can intrude on the best-laid plans of political men and women. One week soaring gas prices dominate the public mind. The next week a Russian invasion of Georgia becomes the main focus of attention. A third week a massive credit crisis that threatens our financial system overwhelms everything else, to the point that carefully crafted domestic policy proposals may well have to be scrapped or profoundly readjusted. That is the nature of politics. Sometimes it’s within your capacity to control events; and sometimes you accept the fact that you have to...

John McCain's White House campaign Monday lashed out at the media and declared the venerable New York Times was "150 percent" behind Democratic hopeful Barack Obama. McCain senior strategist Steve Schmidt rebuked journalists he said had failed in their duty to submit Obama to intense scrutiny and accused news organizations of hounding McCain's running mate Sarah Palin. "Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization," said Schmidt on a conference call with reporters. "It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor...

The McCain Campaign and the Times   [Byron York] Top McCain campaign officials have just finished a conference call to unveil a new ad, called "Chicago Machine," which highlights ties between Barack Obama and Tony Rezko, William Daley, Emil Jones, and Rod Blagojevich.  The ad, the officials say, will air nationally and "across the depth and breadth of the battleground states." Among other topics covered in the call, campaign officials Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt were asked about a story in the New York Times concerning Davis' role in an advocacy group that included Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Davis defended...

In the three months since that night in June, the McCain organization has become a campaign transformed: an elbows-out, risk-taking, disciplined machine that was on display here last week at the Republican convention that nominated Mr. McCain. And the catalyst for the change has largely been Mr. Schmidt, 37, a veteran of the winning 2002 Congressional and 2004 presidential campaigns, where he worked closely with Karl Rove, then Mr. Bush’s senior strategist. Mr. Schmidt’s stamp on the campaign this year was evident from the opening day of the convention to Mr. McCain’s acceptance speech on Thursday. His stamp was reflected...

Hard to believe, but Meredith Vieira is apparently not a regular NewsBusters reader. The Today co-anchor would otherwise have avoided an embarrassing lapse. On Today this morning, Vieira claimed that it was only "blogs" that went after Sarah Palin's family matters. That left her vulnerable to McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt's zinger, pointing out that one of her own network's anchors had questioned Palin's ability to serve as vice-president while attending to her children' needs. Schmidt was presumably referring to Brian Williams. As we noted yesterday in Williams Hides Behind Pantsuits to Take 'Who's Minding Baby?' Shot, the Nightly News...

ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 2 -- Sen. John McCain's top campaign strategist accused the news media Tuesday of being "on a mission to destroy" Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin by displaying "a level of viciousness and scurrilousness" in pursuing questions about her personal life. In an extraordinary and emotional interview, Steve Schmidt said his campaign feels "under siege" by wave after wave of news inquiries that have questioned whether Palin is really the mother of a 4-month-old baby, whether her amniotic fluid had been tested and whether she would submit to a DNA test to establish the child's parentage. Arguing that...

McCain presidential campaign strategist Steve Schmidt went on the record with the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz today, revealing the depths to which the mainstream media has sunk in their efforts to destroy the family of Republican vice presidential pick Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.Schmidt said that the campaign has been deluged with demands from reporters that the Palin family submit to DNA testing to assuage baseless rumors promulgated by the Democratic party's favorite website, the Daily Kos.Schmidt accused the media of being "on a mission to destroy" Sarah Palin.Kurtz writes that Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the Daily Kos, believes the...

Man, is this guy a fighter pilot, or what? There are two military concepts here that explain the (absolutely spectacular) choice of Governor Sarah Palin. Both of them are important to the training of a fighter pilot, and while one of them wasn't formulated until after McCain's flying career was over, it was an observation based on what fighter pilots had to know. One of them is the "envelope" -- which is to say the parameters within which a fighter airplane must operate. The envelope can be seen as a sort of egg-shape, based on how quickly a plane can...

SNIP Now that machine is focused with laser-like intensity on Obama. The clamour is loud and shrill: Obama is vain, inexperienced, liberal and dangerous. It is backed by a clandestine chorus whispering that he has a secretive Islamic past and it uses racially loaded language. It is also only going to get louder. This week, as McCain and the Republicans gather for their party convention in the Minnesota city of St Paul, the noise will become deafening. It has one purpose - to keep the White House in Republican hands at all costs and against the odds. The current mastermind...

It was a bittersweet day for Karl Rove. 8 years from the time when he first made the news in the current President's primary campaigns, Rove had to pass the "Magnificent" crown to new Master Campaigner, John S. McCain after a nearly flawless several weeks of a campaign well run. The choice of Sarah Palin, was of course, what tipped the scales; but, one must wonder, with the hurricanes heading towards Nagin-town, did the Weather Machine come with it?

Karl Rove is passing the torch and his weather machine onto Steve Schmidt. McCain's campaign is now running like a well oiled machine. Thanks to Steve Schmidt.. also known as the Bullet. McCain ad stirs tensions among Hillary/Obama supporters. McCain responds rapidly to Obama's economic claims. McCain uses Dem Delegate to hit Obama. New McCain Ad: Why was Hillary passed over? McCain takes on Obama's "Above my pay grade" remark. McCain takes advantage of Obama slip up. McCain attacks Obama on pro-abortion stance. McCain rolls out new ads with Biden's words. McCain's 'housing' ad strikes back at Obama. New McCain...

The Post-Rove Guru How the Republican Party stopped dreaming about a permanent majority and learned to think like McCain strategist Steve Schmidt. Laurence Lowe, The New Republic Published: Thursday, July 31, 2008 Sergeant Schmidt. The Artillery Shell. The Bullet. Even in the hyper-competitive world of political media strategists--a line of work that tends to reward the studied deployment of affectation and outsized personality--Steve Schmidt, the tough-talking, shaven-headed, 37-year old former high school tight end from North Plainfield, New Jersey, who recently emerged from a scrum among John McCain's inner circle to become the head of day-to-day operations, arrived on the...

Senator John McCain's switch to an aggressive strategy towards his rival Senator Barack Obama has been orchestrated by a shaven-headed former operative in the Bush administration known as "The Bullet".Steve Schmidt, 38, is known as one of the most forceful figures among the elite of the Washington professional campaigners. He learnt the destructive arts of his trade from Karl Rove, the architect of President George W. Bush's two electoral victories, who gave him his nickname. Also once referred to as "human artillery" and affectionately called "Sgt Schmidt" by Mr McCain, he took over the day to day running of the...