Palin v. McCain: "She is a Diva..." "Every Man for Himself..."

According to various reports, a fierce battle between the camps of the two Republican nominees is very publicly rising to the surface:

Kevin Drum:

LET THE DEFENESTRATIONS BEGIN....Politico reports on what's going on behind the scenes in Republican circles:

With despair rising even among many of John McCain’s own advisers, influential Republicans inside and outside his campaign are engaged in an intense round of blame-casting and rear-covering — much of it virtually conceding that an Election Day rout is likely.

....“If you really want to see what ‘going negative’ is in politics, just watch the back-stabbing and blame game that we’re starting to see,” said Mark McKinnon, the ad man who left the campaign after McCain wrapped up the GOP primary. “And there’s one common theme: Everyone who wasn’t part of the campaign could have done better.”

“The cake is baked,” agreed a former McCain strategist. “We’re entering the finger-pointing and positioning-for-history part of the campaign. It’s every man for himself now.”

The Politico report establishes the theme - senior Republicans "echoing" opposition attacks while blaming other senior Republicans for "echoing" opposition attacks:

A senior Republican strategist, speaking with authority about the view of the party’s establishment, issued a wide-ranging critique of the McCain high command: “Lashing out at past Republican Congresses, … echoing your opponent's attacks on you instead of attacking your opponent, and spending 150,000 hard dollars on designer clothes when congressional Republicans are struggling for money, and when your senior campaign staff are blaming each other for the loss in The New York Times [Magazine] 10 days before the election, you’re not doing much to energize your supporters.

Think Progress:

The Politico reports that tensions between the Palin and McCain camps are increasing in the waning days of the campaign. Palin reportedly “has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her,” blaming “her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image.” A McCain campaign source unloads on Palin in an interview with CNN:

“She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” said this McCain adviser, “she does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else. Also she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: divas trust only unto themselves as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”

“I think she’d like to go more rogue,” a Republican source said of Palin.

Huffington Post via TPM:

Now one of John McCain's actual advisers has switched sides:Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.

This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."

You might have expected they'd wait at least until November 4th to point fingers and air their dirty political laundry.

They haven't lost yet, after all.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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