This is What Happens When People Who Fetishize Reputation Go to War with One Another
By Just good clean entertainment:
As Kristol used column after column to boost Sarah Palin, suspicions built inside the campaign that Kristol and McCain staffers close to him had written off McCain and were now determined to salvage Palin as a vehicle for Republican politics in the future, possibly the Republican nomination in 2012. Michael Goldfarb—who left Kristol’s Weekly Standard to work on communications for the McCain campaign—also repeatedly came under suspicion among McCain insiders for his close ties to Kristol and his “manic zeal” in fending off questions over the Palin candidacy.
At this point, the fighting has nothing to do with the political quality of Sarah Palin. These folks are the kind of people who think it’s worth fighting pointless wars that kill thousands in order to demonstrate “toughness”; they aren’t going to back down from an intra-party fight just because Sarah Palin is well on her way to becoming the biggest joke of 21st century American politics. Abandoning the fight now would demonstrate weakness, and would call into question the judgment of the Grand Kristol, and that, for so many reasons, can’t be allowed to happen.
But hey, as long as it keeps the Sarah Palin Project humming, I can’t complain.