Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin typifies the hard-right conservative group in the GOP that would rather eat their own than work towards defeating a common foe.

From CNN:

At a boisterous Sarah Palin rally in Polk City, Florida on Saturday afternoon, one name was surprisingly absent from the campaign decor John McCain’s.

Looking around the Fantasy of Flight aircraft hangar where the rally took place, one could see all the usual reminders that it was a pro-McCain event. There were two large “Country First” banners hung on the walls along with four enormous American flags meant to conjure the campaign’s underlying patriotic theme. Many of the men and women in the audience wore McCain hats and t-shirts.

But on closer inspection, the GOP nominee’s name was literally nowhere to be found on any of the official campaign signage distributed to supporters at the event.

The McCain team is not immune to this attitude (although his campaign has been taken over by the neo-conservatives of the Bush White House).

From ThinkProgress:

Last week, CNN reported that one McCain source called Palin “a diva” who “takes no advice from anyone.”

…

Asked to respond to reports that she is “going rogue,” Palin declared them “absolutely, 100 percent false,” adding, “John McCain and I, and our camps, are working together to get John McCain elected.” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted Palin’s word choice: “Your camps, plural? A McCain camp and a Palin camp? That does not sound good.”

This destructive behaviour is reminiscent of the last dying days of the Howard Government, as Minister turned on Minister (for example, the leaks by Turnbull and the media commentary from Abbott).