Steve Schmidt is a loser.

That is not a smear but a documented fact. Schmidt managed the McCain for President campaign. McCain, as you will recall, lost to Barack Obama in the 2008 election. Schmidt and his candidate bungled the campaign so badly that an untested, smooth-talking, America-bashing dilettante now occupies the White House as Commander-in-Chief.

Great job, guys!

Like a diligent virus, Schmidt refuses to leave the body politic. He is back again to call Sarah Palin's new book "total fiction." Interesting.

The list of Schmidt's disastrous campaign decisions is too long to completely document here. But we conservatives will long remember the propping up of the clown Huckabee to slam Mitt Romney during the primaries, and the idiotic suspension of the campaign - as if the outcome of the financial crisis hinged on McCain's famous "reach across" move on the Senate floor. Not until it was entirely too late did the McCain campaign attempt to tie candidate Obama to the likes of Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, let alone call into question Obama's mysterious background and activities as a student and so-called community organizer. Schmidt and McCain totally bought in to the multicultural hogwash that dictates any legitimate criticism of a person because they may happen to be sort of a minority totally out of bounds.

Most disappointing to those of us residing in the Great Lakes State was Schmidt and McCain throwing Michigan to the wolves. Despite the pleas of voters here and the vice presidential nominee herself, Schmidt and McCain decided that ceding this ground to the most famous member of the United Church of Christ and trampling the chances of candidates like Jack Hoogendyk, who was attempting to remove Carl Levin from the Senate, was really smart. Perhaps McCain didn't want to hurt Carl's feelings. It's like that in the Senate, you see.

The one thing - the only thing - the McCain campaign got right was introducing Sarah Palin to the national stage. Were it not for Palin, McCain would have joined Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter in bringing up the rear of their classes at the Electoral College. As it stands, Schmidt is about on par with Bob Shrum as a total political loser who, somehow, maintains prominence when it comes to commenting on the affairs of state and politics.

John S. McCain III has done two valiant deeds for the United States: He endured the humiliating and debilitating torture on behalf of all of us as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. And he introduced Sarah Palin to the national scene, electrifying the conservative base for the first time in a long time. During the campaign McCain often referred to himself as a "foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution." That may have been the case at some point in time, but that soldier had been AWOL until Palin was named his vice presidential running mate.

So when a hack like Steve Schmidt says that Palin's book is "total fiction," consider the source. He and his bitter aides should retreat to the sidelines for a long, long time and reflect upon how badly their bungling stupidity and unwillingness to tell the hard truths about candidate Obama has damaged the republic.

Matthew May welcomes comments at matthewtmay@yahoo.com