This year John McCain is reprising the Republican Party's quadrennial effort of trying to woo Jewish voters, a group that overwhelmingly supports the Democratic Party and which is currently backing Barack Obama by a 2-to-1 margin (though I'd suspect that estimation is a little low). But if the GOP were truly serious about this outreach, would they really have put someone who appears to be a disciple of Pat Buchanan -- Sarah Palin -- on their ticket for November.

The Nation's Chris Hayes scored a big scoop this morning, unearthing a report from 1999 of Palin's support of then-Independent Presidential candidate Buchanan. And per Ben Smith, Buchanan said today on MSNBC that Palin was "brigader [for his campaign] back in 1996." Take a look:

As Smith notes, Buchanan's statements and actions over the years have earned him his own page on the Anti-Defamation League's website, highlighting statements ranging from "Capitol Hill is Israeli occupied territory" from 1990 and "If you want to know ethnicity and power in the United States Senate, 13 members of the Senate are Jewish folks who are from 2 percent of the population. That is where real power is at..." from just last year.

And yet from multiple sources, both contemporaneous and more recent from those intimately involved, Palin appears to have been a long-time supporter of Buchanan. This is the way McCain and the Republicans expect to court Jewish voters (as well as the roughly 90 to 95 percent of Americans who are to the left of Buchanan)?