That is some post Sarah Palin put up on her Facebook page in advance of the Republican primary Tuesday at Florida. She is accusing the GOP establishment of employing the “tactics of the Left.” She means that faction within the party that “fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today.” She accuses them of having “adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent.” In a long piece that repays a read, she describes the users of these tactics as “cannibals.”

She is referring to the attacks on Newt Gingrich. Mrs. Palin had previously said that were she voting at South Carolina she’d vote for the former speaker.  There are those who credit her demarche for turning the race around for Mr. Gingrich in the Palmetto State. We will see whether her post on the GOP cannibals, which went up Friday afternoon at Facebook, has the same electrifying effect in respect of the Sunshine State. It comes after the debate at Jacksonville, where Mr. Romney so hammered the ex-speaker over his ethics in House that the Georgian seemed like a boxer about to go down.

Yet this week the Wall Street Journal issued an editorial reminding us all how phony were the ethics charges against Mr. Gingrich. The Journal reprised what it was like during the days about which Mrs. Palin also writes. It was a time when the Left was using the politics of personal destruction to gin up picayune scandals like that for which Mr. Gingrich was investigated in the House.  Suzanne Garment wrote a book about the tactic, “Scandal: The Culture of Mistrust in American Politics.”

It happens that an abhorrence of such bullying is one of the reasons these columns a few years back defended Congressman Charles Rangel, even though we disagree with him on substance. We don’t dismiss outright the notion that character is important. But the value of the current race is the chance it gives the GOP to craft the substance of its message. It’s an effort in which all four are making important contributions but none — in our view — has combined all the elements together, at least not yet.

Mr. Romney has the gubernatorial experience and the businessman’s eye and a good fiscal sense. But it is a huge thing that he is so diffident on the monetary issue. “I’m happy to look at a whole range of ideas on how to have greater stability in our currency and in our monetary policies,” he told Lawrence Kudlow. What a wan excuse for leadership at a time when the value of the dollar has collapsed to below a 1,700^th of an ounce of gold. Congressman Paul is the clear leader on monetary policy and the constitutional issues. But if there’s a libertarian line to be cut on foreign policy, he isn’t making it effectively.

Mr. Gingrich is starting to come alive on the monetary issue — his vow to establish a gold commission with an eye to moving America back to stable money backed by specie is, by our lights, the most exciting moment in the race so far. He has a strong and passionate position on foreign policy. But he has what we sometimes call a legislative personality, evincing a tendency to talk a good game only to deal and compromise. Senator Santorum is inspiring on social issues and religion, and his foreign policy is clear. But his targeting of  tax cuts — or breaks — are an un-nerving signal.

It’s a circumstance in which it’s a bit — how to put it? — maddening to have to ferret on Facebook for the views of the potential candidate who might have knitted it all together. These columns tried to make this point during the pre-primary period of this campaign. The Alert Alaskan, as we like to call Mrs. Palin, seemed to comprehend the monetary matters, the foreign policy, the constitutional conservatism, the tax and regulatory issues, the social issues, and the urgency of opening up our domestic reserves of oil and gas.  But the Spellbinder of the Yukon,* as we also like to call her (with a bow to Robert Service), spurned the hopes of millions that she would enter this race, leaving the Republican Party the campaign of which she now complains.

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* Technically in Canada, which is not our point.