PALIN-McCAIN: THE SKIRMISHING BEGINS….Yesterday I mentioned that I was looking forward to the (anonymous! on background!) war that was sure to erupt after the election between Sarah Palin and John McCain. Palin, after all, is not exactly famous for standing by her mentors in their hour of need. But guess what? I don’t have to wait until after the election after all! Ben Smith reports:
Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain’s camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain’s decline.
“She’s lost confidence in most of the people on the plane,” said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to “go rogue” in some of her public pronouncements and decisions. “I think she’d like to go more rogue,” he said.
….”The campaign as a whole bought completely into what the Washington media said — that she’s completely inexperienced,” said a close Palin ally outside the campaign who speaks regularly to the candidate.
“Her strategy was to be trustworthy and a team player during the convention and thereafter, but she felt completely mismanaged and mishandled and ill advised,” the person said. “Recently, she’s gone from relying on McCain advisers who were assigned to her to relying on her own instincts.”
Etc. etc.
Read the whole thing, which I take as just the barest teaser of the bloodshed that’s gong to erupt between McCain and Palin loyalists after the election. My prediction: they’re both going to come out of it with their careers in ruins. The only difference is that Palin probably won’t realize it for a while.
UPDATE: More exciting skirmishing here! “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” says a McCain adviser. “She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else. Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”
