It's unclear why Sarah Palin still keeps people around to write policy positions for her. Weren't we supposed to be over this running-for-president business due to its guaranteed failure? Maybe she's just burning through her PAC money for the hell of it. But it's not going to her longtime war-loving neocon confidantes anymore. She's just too disapproving of the latest war, Libya, for their tastes.

Politico's Ben Smith reports that Palin has broken with Randy Scheunemann and Michael Goldfarb, two hawkish, Beltway insider operatives she grew close with during the McCain campaign and to whom she's been paying lavish fees in the years since:

The personnel shift carries an ideological charge. Scheunemann, the former executive director of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, is a longtime neoconservative stalwart, as is Goldfarb, a former reporter and protege of Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. They crafted for Palin a policy platform and voice reflecting an eagerness to use American force. The pair, who helped Palin with press and debate prep in 2008, were also something of Palin's last link to Washington's political establishment.

But Palin parted ways with that aggressive internationalism in a speech yesterday, condemning U.S. involvement in Libya and laying out a more cautious philosophy of the use of force.

Scheunemann most famously played a part in the ugly post-McCain campaign blame game between various aides. The campaign had silenced him and taken away his BlackBerry after learning that he'd been anonymously trash talking other, less Palin-friendly advisers in the media. This was a glorious time!

Palin's new foreign policy aide is Peter Schweizer, some guy "who blogs regularly at Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace" and thinks France will descend into a civil war between its right wing and Muslim population.

[Image via AP]