... is that it shows the total lack of honesty and trust at the heart of the McCain Palin campaign.

On the one hand, and to start, Palin wasn't so much asking Schmidt to lie--although she also does that -- as lying to SCHMIDT, trying to buffalo him into thinking that her husband for seven years was "accidentally" a member of a secessionist party. Clearly, she thought her clever little story about how it was an accidental box check would fool the head of the McCain campaign. (Moron!)

Then Schmidt, understandably irritated, nonetheless feels he can't simply state the obvious -- lying would cause a distraction -- but has to walk Palin through each element of that proposition step by step:

1) it is a lie;

2) lying will attract attention;

3) lying will be exposed;

4) hence, let's not lie.

He clearly thinks she's moron.

So we have the spectacle of her trying to buffalo the campaign, and he clearly believing that she needs hand holding through the bloody obvious.

Wow!

And of course the bottom emotion out of all this: how could one hold one's head up high about the McCain campaign after this. What a transparent, cynical, and dangerous play for power that was!

Palin is both deeply uninformed, as well as arrogant about being clueless. It's a deadly combination, and her GOP enemies are likely to stop her before Democrats have to.

Yes, they have shown an admirable track record when it comes to keeping arrogantly clueless politicians away from their White House bids.

What I find most striking about the exchange that Joan Walsh cites is Palin's immediate assumption of the role of a petulant small fry, when she supposedly the second most qualified person the Republicans could find to be president of the United States.

She gives Steve Schmidt an order. He basically brushes her off. But Palin is the second in command of the campaign, right? At that point any decently self-respecting executive type takes her complaint to McCain and says, "I'm not happy with this," and forces the issue.

Imagine, for instance, if it had been Hillary Clinton. Ears would have blistered by the time she was done. There would have been no way a campaign adviser would have written so dismissively to her.

Instead Palin starts pleading with Schmidt, taking this whiney tone like the wayward party girl trying to wheedle the keys to the car from her dad.

That is the GOP's great white hope. Something about that kind of vapid petulance is precisely what her devotees crave. She's "in charge" only in the same sense as the porn actress before she throws off her glasses and executive accouterments in order to get on with the male voyeuristic fantasy.

At least the porn actress is up front about her real purpose. Palin is still pretending (to herself?) that she's actually got the chops to run anything.

supported a known secessionist supporter.

GOP Country First Hun.

Thanks for the link. That was some interesting reading.

Respectfully, the AIP is not about white separatism. I am unfamiliar with the "ties" of which you speak, but find the notion that they are a racially separatist movement extremely unlikely. I won't claim there is no racism in Alaska, but it's nothing like what I have seen in the states.

In general, Alaskans are more tolerant than most of the rest of the country. Moving to the Lower 48 was a complete culture shock for me. For example, I didn't realize until I got here that gay people are not widely tolerated and accepted; that blew me away. It was like walking backwards in time. I was also surprised to find that "black neighborhoods", "white neighborhoods", "[insert ethnicity here] neighborhoods", those actually exist--you guys actually have those down here. Growing up, I thought that was just some TV or movie myth. I mean, I had never seen such a thing.

It is possible that the group has changed significantly since I left the state, but I would bet money that any ties to white separatists would be extremely narrow and linked to a specific, common cause. As strange as it may sound down here, it is very conceivable that a group in Alaska could form a limited partnership with a group with whom they share a single philosophical viewpoint--even one with whom they otherwise had serious disagreements--solely for political reasons. Note that the Alaskan state senate ethics panel voted unanimously to investigate her, despite the fact that literally 2/3rds of the committee was in her political party. Think that could happen down here? In Alaska, disagreeing with someone simply means you don't see eye to eye on an issue, not that they are evil and should be utterly destroyed--that's all you guys, here in the states. You can actually vote for a bill sponsored by a member of the other party because you agree with it, and it will not destroy your political career.

In short, I wouldn't characterize the AIP as an offshoot or ally of the separatist movements unless there was unequivocal proof of a shared belief system, not just a single shared belief.

Well, Bush was also both deeply uninformed and arrogant about being clueless, but he somehow managed to get elected. Let's not underestimate the power of human cluelessness.

Palin is a lot like Bush, except with winking and flirting and fake folksiness instead of strutting and stupid jokes and fake Texasness. She bears watching.

I couldn't agree more. Mostly because we've just escaped from eight years of nightmarish, Bushian hell, and deep down we all know it could happen again.

The good news is that Sarah Palin doesn't wear well. Mike Murphy pretty much confirmed that for me the other night when he told Chuck Todd that since her brief peak during the first two weeks of the general election campaign, Palin's poll-rating trajectory has been consistently downward.

Of course, it'll stop, eventually: At her base. And that's where the other good news is. The religious nutbags on the right certainly adore her and will never stop adoring her, no matter what happens. But as Purdham points out in his VF article, and as these e-mails between Palin and McCain's seasoned campaign team reflect, significant factions of the Republican Party do NOT. I look forward to some delicious internecine warfare.

The only question that never seems to get asked is WHAT in the world John McCain was doing for six or so months, between the time he clinched the nomination and made this treasonous choice of a running mate. Did he just sit around with his thumb up his ass? How could he have made such a rushed and uninformed selection when he had all that time to ponder it? It's just incredible.