steve schmidt

This friendly Politico piece on Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) effort to “reshape the Republican Party in his own center-right image” doesn’t quite take the edge off of Steve Schmidt’s comments about Sarah Palin. The McCain-Palin 2008 campaign manager, speaking yesterday in Washington:
Most politicians of prominence write a book. My honest view is that she would [...]

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 [...]

I never got around to plugging Robert Draper’s absolutely must-read deconstruction of the McCain campaign for the New York Times Magazine. Be sure to check it out this weekend, if you haven’t already. It might be the best article written about the campaign this cycle.
This window into the campaign’s inner workings — how it reached [...]

Modern presidential campaigns don’t just work the refs. They obsess over the media.
Gov. Sarah Palin can’t seem to finish a rally without riffing on her (rare) interactions with the “mainstream media.”
Since the conventions, the Obama campaign has consistently hammered reporters for how they cover McCain’s falsehoods.
The styles are different, but the target and goals are [...]

More from Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s interview with Fox News’ Carl Cameron…
Palin says she wishes the McCain campaign hadn’t made the decision to pull its staff and resources out of Michigan.

OXFORD, Miss. — “The Bullet” looked downright angry with Sen. Barack Obama after Friday night’s debate. Standing in the Spin Room next to the debate auditorium, McCain strategist Steve Schmidt drew a larger clutch of reporters than other surrogates — a vaunted list that included a former secretary of state, several governors and even [...]

Matt DeLong has a great new post exposing the McCain campaign’s new press strategy. For the view from Obama-land, I’ll just share two other reactions:
First, a liberal YouTuber mocks the tone from Steve Schmidt, the angry former Bush aide that has turned McCain’s operation into the slashing, lying, anti-press operation on display this week.

McCain senior campaign adviser Steve Schmidt had his response ready to go when reporters inevitably questioned campaign adviser Rick Davis’ $35,000 per month former position as the president of an organization set up by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stave off increased federal regulation, as reported today by The New York Times.
Without [...]