Message Discipline

Obviously I don’t have any stake in the reputation-destruction fight going on in Politico between Bill Kristol and ex-McCain campaign foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann on one side and ex-McCain strategist Steve Schmidt on the other. But I couldn’t stop laughing at this:

Scheunemann, confirming that his e-mail had been searched, accused Schmidt of “acting in a manner of Iranian secret police” in going to his account.

Fourteen paragraphs later — this is a war of inches! — comes this:

“So after that, they went nuclear with ‘diva’ the next day,” Scheunemann said, referring to the Palin-bashing done to CNN’s Dana Bash the day after the POLITICO story. “But did anybody search Mark or Nicolle Wallace’s e-mails for leaks to Dana Bash?”

I hope for Scheuemann’s sake that he’s actually complaining about a double standard, as the alternative explanation is too awful a crime against self-awareness, but in either case, I just don’t know how these guys lost the election.