"Sunken ships loosen bitter lips. The failed  McCain campaign, for all its high-minded talk of honor, duty and courage, is  now teeming with unscrupulous gossipmongers. Seems the dishy staffers forgot to  crack open their copies of Senator McCain's bestseller, 'Character Is  Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult  Should Remember.'
                  Rest assured: Their cowardly character  assassination of Sarah Palin won't be forgotten.
                  The finks turned to Newsweek and Fox News to  spread petty rumors about Palin's intellect and character. The magazine peddled  anecdotes from sources horrified that Palin greeted top advisers at her hotel  room -- gasp! -- 'wearing nothing but a towel' and 'wet  hair.' 
                  Fox News reporter Carl Cameron breathlessly reported that his  unnamed McCain sources told him Palin lacked 'a degree of knowledgeability  necessary to be a running mate' because, they claimed, she didn't know  which countries were parties to the North American Free Trade Agreement and  'didn't understand that Africa was a continent, rather than a series, a  country just in itself.'
                  Let's assume for a moment that the McCain  rumormongers are telling the truth about Palin (and I don't believe they are).  Who would it damn more: Palin, or McCain and his vetters, who greenlighted her  for the vice presidential nomination? Don't need a fancy Ivy League degree to  figure that one out.
                  In introducing her to America, McCain praised  her independence and backbone: She 'stands up for what's right, and she  doesn't let anyone tell her to sit down.' The inside snipers are now  roasting her for that very attribute -- redefined as "going rogue" --  because she had the nerve to try to schedule media interviews on her own. The  nerve of her!
                  Palin's response to the campaign fragging? At a late  Wednesday night airport press conference in Anchorage, immediately upon landing  home after the election defeat, she smiled cheerfully. The Alaska governor  shrugged off the 'foolish things' said by the McCain saboteurs, and  simply said, 'It's politics. … It's rough and tumble and you've got to  have a thick skin just like I've got.' 
                  Hollywood savaged Palin. Journalists mocked her.  Liberal blogs slimed her. Opponents cursed her, Photoshopped her, hacked her  e-mail, hanged her in effigy, called her bigot, Bible-thumper and bimbo, and  attacked her husband and children. But nothing Palin endured during the  election season compares to the treatment she's receiving from these  backstabbing blabbermouths who worked on the same campaign she poured herself  into over the last three months.
                  Sarah Palin worked her heart out. She energized  tens of thousands to come out when they would have otherwise stayed home. She  touched countless families. I didn't agree with everything she said on the  campaign trail. But she vigorously defended the Second Amendment and the  sanctity of life more eloquently in practice than any of the educated  conservative aristocracy. And she did it all with a tirelessness and an  infectious optimism that defied the shameless, bottomless attempts by elites in  both parties to bring her and her family down.
                  Liberty needs a virtuous people to survive;  self-governance requires virtuous leaders. 'Knowledgeability' is a  necessary trait in political life, but it is not sufficient. The elitist  critics of Palin, so blindly enamored of Barack Obama's ability to hold forth  for hours on theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, ignored the Founding Fathers'  counsel: Character counts. In times of adversity and crisis, it counts more  than IQ points, instant trivia recall and bloviation skills.
                  'The most important thing I have learned,  from my parents, from teachers, from my faith, from many good people I have  been blessed to know, and from the lives of people whose stories we have  included in this book," John McCain wrote in "Character Is  Destiny," "is to want what they had, integrity, and to feel the sting  of my conscience when I have risked it for some selfish reason.'
                  John McCain not only failed to make that message  stick with the electorate, he apparently couldn't persuade his own staff to  heed his advice and practice what he preached." - Michelle Malkin