All In The (GOP) Family.

Here we go again...

Yesterday, I posted a link to Vanity Fair's piece on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, including an update about William Kristol's unhappiness with Todd Purdam's article. As with everything surrounding the Alaskan Disaster, the aftermath has taken on a soap opera feel.

If you read this blog during the 2008 presidential campaign, you are familiar with the dozens of controversies lampooned here involving Palin, Kristol, McCain and the rest of the nitwits involved in that GOP debacle. With Palin, we get a never-ending bonus round; her thin-skinned responses to every slight--real or perceived--and her seeming inability to concentrate on the governance of her state or heed the many suggestions that she actually learn about the issues bring to mind the Tom Waits lyric: she's like a wrecking ball no longer connected to the chain.

Jonathan Martin at Politico has a piece up this morning that illuminates the behind-the-scenes machinations of operatives within the McCain camp during the campaign, and the backbiting that continues almost eight months later. And at the center of the storm?

Our l'il Sarah.

Here's Martin:

Kristol cited a passage in Purdum’s piece in which “some top aides” were said to worry about the Alaska governor’s “mental state” and the prospect that the Alaska governor may be suffering from post-partum depression following the birth of her son Trig. “In fact, one aide who raised this possibility in the course of trashing Palin’s mental state to others in the McCain-Palin campaign was Steve Schmidt,” Kristol wrote.

Asked about the accusation, Schmidt fired back in an e-mail: “I'm sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign.”

“After all, his management of [former Vice President] Dan Quayle’s public image as his chief of staff is still something that takes your breath away,” Schmidt continued. “His attack on me is categorically false.”

Kristol, of course, is the oft-criticized, oft-wrong, neocon editor of the right-wing Weekly Standard and a FOX News staple. He's also just about the smarmiest SOB on the planet.

It seems "The Wasilla Hillbillies" may be in for a longer run than their forebears from Beverly Hills. If you are a political junkie, you'll love this stuff. The whole Politico piece is here.