The long knives are out as the GOP civil war has already begun

Posted by AzBlueMeanie :

These guys don't even wait for the body to be buried first. The post-mortems for the McCain campaign have already begun,Chris Cilizza blog: McCain Campaign Post-Mortem.  In a New York Times Magazine article by Robert Draper on Sunday The Making (and Remaking and Remaking) of John McCain, Draper takes the first cut (of many) at explaining what went wrong with the McCain campaign and, more importantly, who is to blame.

The cast of villains includes Karl Rove acolyte Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, Mark Salter, Rick Davis, and Sarah Plain, but more importantly, John McCain himself.

"McCain, it's fair to say, was not a big believer in organization," Draper writes. "The important decisions were all made by him, with various confidants of ambiguous portfolio orbiting around him and often colliding with one another."

The warring camps within the GOP have formed a circular firing squad and are already playing the blame game.

"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 roll-out and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain's decline. Palin allies report rising camp tension – Ben Smith – Politico.com

The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party: Some see her as a charismatic, hawkish conservative leader with the potential, still unrealized, to cross over to attract moderate voters. Anger among Republicans who see Palin as a star and as a potential future leader has boiled over because, they say, they see other senior McCain aides preparing to blame her in the event he is defeated.

"These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves," a McCain insider said, referring to McCain's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin's campaign. Palin's partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin's avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News' Katie Couric, the sometimes painful content of which the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week.

"A number of Gov. Palin's staff have not had her best interests at heart, and they have not had the campaign's best interests at heart," the McCain insider fumed, noting that Wallace left an executive job at CBS to join the campaign.

"But other McCain aides, defending Wallace, dismissed the notion that Palin was mishandled. The Alaska governor was, they argue, simply unready — "green," sloppy and incomprehensibly willing to criticize McCain … Some McCain aides say they had little choice with a candidate who simply wasn't ready for the national stage, and that Palin didn't forcefully object."

The recent revelations about the RNC outfitting Caribou Barbie (and her family) with $150,000 worth of new clothing from designer clothiers in New York City – you know, the anti-American part of America actually attacked on 9/11 – has also caused some consternation within the campaign. Ben Smith's Blog: Going rogue

Sarah Palin on Sunday sounded off on the $150,000 wardrobe that was purchased for her in September, denouncing the report as "ridiculous" and declaring emphatically: "Those clothes, they are not my property."

A senior adviser to John McCain told CNN's Dana Bash that the comments about her wardrobe "were not the remarks we sent to her plane this morning."

Palin wandered off the reservation and was "going rogue"?

The recent McCain campaign aid leaks to CNN about Palin "going rogue" Palin's 'going rogue,' McCain aide says apparently have been attributed to Mitt Romney aids now working for the McCain campaign. Former Romney aides on McCain campaign behind Palin trash-talk:

"According to the right wing American Spectator, Mitt's people have been undermining Sarah Palin, because they're trying to set up Mitt for 2012:

Some former Romney aides were behind the recent leaks to media, including CNN, that Governor Sarah Palin was a "diva" and was going off message intentionally. The former and current Romney supporters further are pushing Romney supporters for key Republican jobs, including head of the Republican National Committee.

That means Romney and his people have already written McCain off for this race. Expect some retaliation from Palin's people."

The 2008 campaign contenders are all jockeying for a narrative that will position them to run for the top of the ticket in 2012 before this election is even over. How classy.

The coming GOP defeat will result in recriminations and accusations, and lead to a civil war within the GOP as the party attempts to restructure its stale message and old coalitions that are no longer useful to the party, in order to remain competitive and relevant in the 21st century. We may very well see two or more political parties emerge from the wreckage of this Republican Party train wreck. It is too early to predict how the old coalitions may realign themselves into a new political party or parties. I only hope that they will wander in the wilderness for a generation or more to come as they try to work it all out.