Sarah Palin has dropped two neoconservative foreign policy advisers, Randy Scheunemann and Michael Goldfarb, in favor of the realist Peter Schweitzer, Politico's Ben Smith reports. It's an indication that Palin is shifting her foreign policy positions to be less interventionist, as seen in her speech Monday, in which criticized the "ill-defined" mission in Libya. "We can’t fight every war, we can't undo every injustice in the world," Palin said.

Scheuneman, who served as the executive director of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, was one of Palin's staunchest defenders when she faced a lot of criticism--much of it anonymous--from McCain staffers after the 2008 election. With Goldfarb, formerly of the Weekly Standard,  Scheuneman helped prepare Palin for her debate with Joe Biden. He consistently pushed back against insinuations that Palin was too intellectually lazy to understand core political concepts.

Scheuneman and Goldfarb were also "were also something of Palin's last link to Washington's political establishment," Smith writes. Schweitzer, who writes columns for Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace, has compared the intervention into Libya to Vietnam and criticized Obama for supporting Egyptian protesters over longtime ally Hosni Mubarak.

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at ereeve at nationaljournal dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
Elspeth Reeve