EVILDOER VS. EVILDOER

I gather from Politico that there's a huge, multi-sided GOP feud going on in response to the Vanity Fair article about Sarah Palin -- or, more accurately, the article has reignited an old feud (or feuds) -- and my thought is, um, is it OK if I root for everyone to lose?

I especially don't have a favorite in the main bout:

... William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard and at times an informal adviser to Sen. John McCain, touched off the latest back-and-forth Tuesday morning with a post on his magazine's blog criticizing the Todd Purdum-authored Palin story and pointing a finger at Steve Schmidt, McCain's campaign manager.

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....

I know defending Sarah Palin's honor is personal for Bill Kristol -- in a Mark Sanford way, it seems, if unrequited -- but can Schmidt get some love from Kristol, please? He and Schmidt may be at loggerheads now, but Schmidt helped turn McCain into a much purer wingnut, and Schmidt's work for McCain laid the foundation for some of the wingnuttiest aspects of the GOP right now, the very things Kristol and his fellow movement conservatives embrace.

Schmidt (along with Rick Davis) proposed Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate. Schmidt introduced the McCain slogan "Country First," defined Obama as a trivial celebrity, and got McCain to blame his woes on the "liberal media," which Schmidt charged with stonewalling on Bill Ayers. Schmidt eagerly seized on Joe the Plumber's chat with Obama, effectively setting in motion the Obama-as-socialist meme. (Jesus, that was the precursor to the tea party movement; Kristol should have a bit of gratitude.)

Schmidt may have had fallings-out with Palin and Joe the Plumber; he may not really be an ideologue; he may now be pro-gay marriage. Still, with McCain he had the opportunity to run a centrist, positive campaign aimed at swing voters, and instead he chose to go McCarthyite, scurrilous, and hardcore. And from Kristol, this is the thanks he gets?