What a difference 72 hours can make. After The McCain campaign released a statement on Monday saying Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol was five months pregnant, the press jumped, providing details on a story the public was hungry to read about. Even Labor Day couldn’t keep a story this big away. But now McCain staffers, conservative media outlets and other Republicans are turning against the press, claiming the “liberal media” are out to destroy Palin’s candidacy.

Democrats may have been more united behind their candidate than Republicans, despite the Clinton/Obama in-fighting, but Republicans can join together and start striking the media punching bag.

In tonight’s speeches, former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee thanked the “liberal media” for going after Palin and uniting the Republican base. Giuliani and Romney took their shots as well, stirring up the antiquated Conservative Napoleonic complex that the media is utterly dominated by people out to bring ruin to the Republican Party.

Yesterday, the McCain camp canceled a scheduled interview their candidate had on CNN’s Larry King Live after Campbell Brown pushed McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds to elaborate on some of Gov. Palin’s executive experience in an interview earlier in the day.

Former senator and presidential candidate Fred Thompson hammered home the notion during his speech in the Xcel Center. He said, “Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit.”

Conservative talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh followed. On his Wednesday-morning show, he accused the media - and the entire “Washington government machine” - of attacking Palin. “I sense a shift here, ladies and gentlemen, in the Drive-By Media and the way they’re going after Sarah Palin,” Limbaugh said. “I think they’re going to drop this business that she’s not experienced enough. I think they’re going to go after the fact she’s trailer trash.”

Senior McCain strategist Steve Schmidt released statements and gave interviews all day Wednesday, arguing that the press’s treatment of Sarah Palin needed to change. In an interview with the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, he claimed news outlets were “on a mission to destroy” Palin, and said the McCain camp was “under siege” from reporters.

Stories that shouldn’t be part of the national discourse, like Us Weekly’s admittedly unfair cover story, just provide more ammo for critics. The headline blares ”Babies, Lies and Scandal,” and when compared with the glowing cover story on Barack and Michelle Obama, the differences are notably stark. Any critique of Us Weekly is likely to be true, but the only reason to speak of tabloids along with the Washington Post and the New York Times is to subtly slime these different publications that have different publishing goals.

How thin a line can the press possibly walk? Declining to push the McCain campaign on its vetting process of Palin opens the press up to criticism if more Palin indiscretions come to light later. If discussing Bristol’s pregnancy is off limits, then surely Sarah Palin’s support of abstinence-only sex education in schools is not.

The press should be held to high standards, and you’ll get no protest from me that media outlets have made (and continue to make) election coverage mistakes. But one can imagine how the Palin story will play out. A reasoned debate about whether Bristol Palin’s pregnancy should be covered, and in what context,  will get overshadowed by a categorical blame-a-thon.

If campaign coverage happens in a vacuum, then sometimes the vacuum implodes. Before the week is up, conservative commentators will have reframed the Sarah Palin story as a classic liberal media shark attack. Conservatives will have their new rallying cry, and the press will once again play the role of fall guy.  It’s all too easy to predict.