On this morning’s Meet the Press, Rachel Maddow brought up the connection of Sarah Palin’s ghostwriter, Lynn Vincent, with white supremacist blogger Robert Stacy McCain — a connection first reported here at Little Green Footballs. Here’s the video clip and the transcript.

MS. MADDOW:  I, I do think that there’s a little bit of reckoning that needs to happen on the right for Sarah Palin’s success.  I mean, she was the vice presidential nominee, she is going to sell a kazillion books and she is the biggest brand name in Republican politics still right now.  And she’s chose—the person who’s writing her book, her last—the last person who she co-authored a book with was called “Donkey Cons” and it was co-authored with a guy who’s widely believed to be and I believe him to be a white supremacist. So she’s chosen Lynn Vincent, who’s written a book with a white supremacist, to write her book, and she’s the biggest name in Republican politics.

MR. MURPHY:  Oh, but, Rachel…

MS. MADDOW:  And you can dismiss her and say she’s not going to be the nominee, but I do think the right needs to sort of answer for what’s happened to conservatism.

MR. MURPHY:  But let me just say, I am a well-documented nonfan of Sarah Palin, at least as a national politician.  I don’t know her personally.  But that’s guilt by association stuff.  That’s the cable stuff.  That’s the problem.

MS. MADDOW:  But why would you—you can pick anybody to be your ghostwriter.

MR. MURPHY:  Sarah Palin’s a lot of things, but she’s not a white supremacist.  And…

MS. MADDOW:  You could—no, I don’t think she is.  But when you can pick anybody, why would she pick somebody who’s associated with the League of the South, who said that Americans are revolted by the idea of having a black sister-in-law.  I mean, she—this is who she picked to write her book.

MR. MURPHY:  Yeah, but there’s…

MS. MADDOW:  Why do you do that?

MR. MURPHY:  That’s sort of guilt by association stuff, which I don’t know and it can—I—check it out.

MS. MADDOW:  It’s guilt by choice.  It’s guilt by choice.

GREGORY:  OK.

MR. MURPHY:  It is, is so, so not important to the central questions in the country right now.  But that’s what cable TV has become, so I…

MS. MADDOW:  Sarah Palin’s popularity is a central question in the Republican Party right now.

It’s revealing that Palin apparently didn’t vet Lynn Vincent’s past associations before picking Vincent as ghostwriter for the book that’s supposed to put her on the political map. As I wrote in the original post, this isn’t just bad judgment, it’s rancid, reeking, abominable judgment.

There are thousands of writers who wouldn’t have had these kinds of problems. Out of all those thousands of possible ghostwriters, Palin chose an extreme religious right creationist, who wrote a book with a known white supremacist.

This is how Lynn Vincent’s co-writer Robert Stacy McCain answers the well-documented facts that he associates with neo-Nazis and white supremacist organizations such as American Renaissance: The Other McCain: When I dreamed long ago of appearing some day on ‘Meet the Press’ …

Rachel Maddow has got several facts wrong, and you know what? I’m going to let her try to figure out which facts she’s got wrong. She gets paid by MSNBC to report the facts, and as she goes about the process of proving she couldn’t find her own ass with both hands, I’ll be content to watch and laugh.

How many times have I said that it’s a long story, and that I’m not going to tell the whole thing until somebody pays me for the story? …

Let Rachel Maddow find out for herself that, for example, Donkey Cons wasn’t Lynn Vincent’s most recent book. … There is no obligation for me to speak a word in my own defense.

Right. Again, take a look at what he claims he has “no obligation” to defend.