For feminists and progressives it's really easy to criticize Sarah Palin. She has a horrid record of defending reproductive rights for women. She sees nothing wrong with abusing her power as governor of Alaska. She has a record of taking gifts and expensive favors from lobbyists and political allies.

What's worse : It's no secret she was not chosen for her knowledge of national domestic or foreign policy and politics. The woman was not vetted properly because she was not crowned the GOPs beauty queen for her knowledge or experience. She was chosen for being a good looking Christian Nationalist that would "turn on" the theocratic faction of the GOPs "base". And it doesn't hurt she actively sold herself to the neo-con hacks desperate to slap some lipstick on the ever ugly Republican Party pig.

Yet all those negatives were pushed aside by the GOP operatives, Bill Krystol included, who sold Sarah Palin as a viable Vice-President to John McCain. All those hacks squabbled over Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and McCain's own pick Joe Lieberman. They wouldn't have any of them.

After a less than 2 hour meeting, McCain and his campaign and party hacks chose her. No drama involved just a cold and calculated political decision. They had more experienced and better qualified women to go after the "Hillary Vote", yet they made her their political beauty queen as the last "Hail Mary" pass they had up their sleeve.

And it worked --at least for a little. McCain's announcement right after the DNC Convention and Obama's speech took all the thunder away from him. The media went ga-ga and so did the 70% of forlorn Republicans who didn't vote for McCain during the primaries he none the less won.

Then Katie Couric happened. Strike One : The woman was a disaster.

Follow up to the interview messes was the Wall Street BailOut mess. Strike Two :  McCain showed himself as not only erratic but a fool.

The nail in the coffin of the McCain campaign lays squarely on the GOPs doing : news broke they spent $150, 000 on Sarah "Say No To Pork Barrel" Palin's wardrobe. Strike Three and they were out.

No sooner she proved a liability, the neo-con and GOP hacks that raised her up as their queen wasted no time selling out the woman to, of all places, FOX News.

Talk about passing the buck. It's true : The GOP hacks behind this are cowards and jerks.

It's a low of lows that after the GOP and McCain campaign loss they've gone on a rampage of smears against the Governor of Alaska. There are hundreds of reasons why John McCain didn't become president. You don't even have to look into his presidential campaign : Look back to the primaries and you'll find many reasons to why McCain lost.

What's even worse: They've used her knowledge or lack thereof of the continent of Africa. Why not leave it at NAFTA? Why go on FOXNews and say that anonymous sources heard her say African is not a country but a continent?

I've already written about how the finger-prints of Rupert Murdoch could be found in the smear campaigns against Barack Obama. Now that he won, they think they can absolve themselves and show some payback by kicking not the old guy but the woman in the teeth.

Compassionate conservatism at it's best. It's time to take the NRA card out and put it down once and for all.

And for Sarah Palin? I have to say she has shown grace in defeat. Sure, she was smearer #1 in her campaign against Obama, but she didn't call herself a pitbull with lipstick for nothing.

After I saw her interview with Dana Bash, I actually felt sorry for her. Because it's one thing to have your opponents slinging mud back at you. It's another to have your very own cheerleaders kick you in the teeth on their way out the loser's door. And that's exactly what they have done to her.