The Wages of Sin

Here is another Daily Beast piece, this one by Scott Horton, that suggests Bill Kristol at the NY Times was a "mole" for Palin and her handlers in the campaign.

What emerges on a close reading is this: Palin and those closest to her inside the campaign were eager to wage a Lee Atwater-style campaign designed to demonize Barack Obama, with Palin as the figure leading the charge. McCain was resisting this push or at least attempting to keep it within tight boundaries. Kristol campaigned against the McCain strategy, boosting Palin.

Well, they failed at that, didn't they? The take-away for me here is that they grossly overestimated Palin and her appeal beyond the radical fundamentalists.

Incidentally, Atwater pioneered the methods of campaigning perfected by Karl Rove in 2000. He died in 1991 at age 40 of a malignant brain tumor. Before he died, he converted to Catholicism and wrote a bunch of apologies to those he had harmed. Noble effort, that. But karma got him good. The message to me is that when you screw with people's lives that way, there is a dear price to pay. Atwater paid with his life. Rove's bill hasn't been delivered to him just yet, but it will. Palin is running a tab right now, and God help her if she doesn't abandon that plan.