Palin is "going rogue"...

[Speedo]

... according to some of McCain's advisers.

(CNN) -- With 10 days to go until Election Day, long-brewing tensions between GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and key aides to Sen. John McCain have become so intense they are spilling out in public, sources say.

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue." A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.

McCain sources say Palin has gone off message several times, and they privately wonder if the incidents were deliberate. They cited that she labeled robocalls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source tells CNN she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this 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."

A Palin associate defended her by saying she is "not good at process questions" and that her comments on Michigan and the robocalls were answers to process questions.

But this Palin source acknowledged that Palin is trying to take more control of her message, pointing to last week's impromptu press conference on a Colorado tarmac.

Tracey Schmitt, Palin's press secretary, was urgently called over after Palin wandered over to the press and started talking. Schmitt unsuccessfully tried several times to end the unscheduled session.

"We acknowledge that perhaps she should have been out there doing more," a different Palin adviser recently told CNN, arguing, "It's not fair to judge her off one or two sound bites" from the network interviews.

The Politico reported Saturday on Palin's frustration, specifically with McCain advisers Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt. They helped decide to limit Plain's initial press contact to high-profile interviews with Charlie Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, which all McCain sources admit were highly damaging.

In response, Wallace e-mailed CNN the same quote she gave the Politico:

"If people want to throw me under the bus my personal belief is that the most honorable thing to do is to lie there," Wallace wrote.

But two sources, one Palin associate and one McCain adviser, defended the decision to keep her press interaction limited after she was first picked, both saying flatly that she was not ready and missteps could have been a lot worse.

They insisted she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McCain's record.

Palin spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt came to the back of the plane Saturday to deliver a statement to traveling reporters: "Unnamed sources with their own agenda will say what they want, but from Gov. Palin down, we have one agenda, and that's to win on Election Day."

Yet another senior McCain adviser lamented the public recriminations.

"This is what happens with a campaign that's behind, it brings out the worst in people fingerpointing and scapegoating," this senior adviser told CNN.

This adviser also decried the double standard, noting that Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, has gone off the reservation as well, most recently by telling donors at a fundraiser that America's enemies will try to "test" Obama.

Tensions like those within the McCain-Palin campaign are not unusual; vice presidential candidates also have a history of butting heads with the top of the ticket.

John Edwards and his inner circle repeatedly questioned Sen. John Kerry strategy in 2004, and Kerry loyalists repeatedly aired in public their view that Edwards would not play the traditional attack dog role with relish because he wanted to protect his future political interests.

Even in a winning campaign like Bill Clinton's, some of Al Gore's aides in 1992 and again in 1996 questioned how Gore was being scheduled for campaign events.
Jack Kemp's aides distrusted the Dole camp and vice versa, and Dan Quayle loyalists had a list of gripes remarkably similar to those now being aired by Gov. Palin's aides.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/25/palin.tension/index.html

 

[Fifty]

Apparently nobody in the McCain campaign has ever dealt with women before.

 

[Yoda Power]

If this story is true and unbiased, this places Palin in seriously bad light.

I'm not so sure it is though...

edit: If it just have some shade of truth in it, then it basicly just confirms what most people already expected about her.

 

[Trajan12]

Palin '12

2 back to back Obama landslides would be oh so awesome.

 

[GenMarshall]

Good good. All the more advantages the Democratic Party will have.

 

[Phlegmak]

All I have to say is that I'm sick to death of Palin trying to look like "the average Josephina Six-Pack". It's an insult to human intelligence.

 

[mrt144]

Isn't this an interesting development? Palin, who was supposed to rescue the McCain ticket, now is only looking out for her own now. And shes putting herself in further positions to be embarrassed like she was on the softball questions from Gibson and Couric. Is this a symptom of her own ego taking hold or is a symptom of her total lack of self awareness thats leading to this?
Also this kind of action doesnt really lend itself to a campaign that thinks it can win? Further, is someone like Palin, who isn't showing herself to be a team player, really going to reach the leadership of the GOP and do any current republicans really want her as a leader of the party?

And again; FULLY VETTED? WHAT?

 

[ainwood]

Moderator Action: Stick to the topic - spam not appreciated.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Mark1031]

The problem for republicans is that she is the party base. That is the 25-30% of the nation that doesn’t care about anything other than embryos and gays and God (their very specific view of God). Economic depression, failed war on false pretenses, missed largest attack on US since pearl harbor, worst kind of irresponsible government spending and corruption. None of this matters as long as you are the kind of Old Testament Christian that wears their religion on your sleeve. The problem for the party is that this is only 30% of the electorate and it turns the rest of the country off. But w/o the base they have nothing as the economic philosophy and foreign policy of conservatives is a failure. There is going to be a lot of retrenchment in the republican party. Best of luck.

 

[bhsup]

Whether she is worthy of the position or not, I cannot blame her for trying to get out from under the thumb of handlers. For better or worse, don't you all think it is good that she is trying to be her own person? We'll get a more realistic view of her.

 

[Bill3000]

Whether she is worthy of the position or not, I cannot blame her for trying to get out from under the thumb of handlers. For better or worse, don't you all think it is good that she is trying to be her own person? We'll get a more realistic view of her.

Being your own person really doesn't work if that person is unelectable.

 

[mrt144]

Being your own person really doesn't work if that person is unelectable.

and it doesn't bode well when you don't play to financial and foreign policy conservatives who vote with their brain, not their crosses.

 

[fugazi]

Whether she is worthy of the position or not, I cannot blame her for trying to get out from under the thumb of handlers. For better or worse, don't you all think it is good that she is trying to be her own person? We'll get a more realistic view of her.

I think you need more ducttape to keep this boat afloat

 

[The Last Conformist]

Whether she is worthy of the position or not, I cannot blame her for trying to get out from under the thumb of handlers. For better or worse, don't you all think it is good that she is trying to be her own person? We'll get a more realistic view of her.

Good for whom? Good for Sarah Palin, perhaps, good for America at large, probably, but not, I'm fairly sure, for John McCain.

 

[mrt144]

Whether she is worthy of the position or not, I cannot blame her for trying to get out from under the thumb of handlers. For better or worse, don't you all think it is good that she is trying to be her own person? We'll get a more realistic view of her.

a realistic view of her might be a lot worse than what weve already seen...

 

[GoodGame]

Looks like she has a conscious. I too find the robocalling quite irritating, especially as I receive at least one a week. Her rogue bit suggests that she had some kind of leadership potential.

PS sorry for the spam.

 

[mangxema]

Ha ha! She's out-mavericking the maverick!

By this point, I'm pretty jaded by surprises. It makes sense though. It's less than two weeks from the election, and it's extremely unlike that McCain will win. What else is she going to do. Being the VP candidate was an absolute blessing for her career.

 

[emzie]

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

That's harsh. Like harsh harsh.

 

[Godwynn]

Ha ha! She's out-mavericking the maverick!

I was gonna say that.

 

[klazlo]

The problem for republicans is that she is the party base. That is the 25-30% of the nation that doesn’t care about anything other than embryos and gays and God (their very specific view of God). Economic depression, failed war on false pretenses, missed largest attack on US since pearl harbor, worst kind of irresponsible government spending and corruption. None of this matters as long as you are the kind of Old Testament Christian that wears their religion on your sleeve. The problem for the party is that this is only 30% of the electorate and it turns the rest of the country off. But w/o the base they have nothing as the economic philosophy and foreign policy of conservatives is a failure. There is going to be a lot of retrenchment in the republican party. Best of luck.

Maybe the best for the GOP would be a split, with Palin taking the evangelist, racist wackos and the rest could form a fiscal conservative and socially moderate party with some appeal to the independents (of whom some might leave Obama in the coming years if he turns out to be too liberal for their taste). The GOP has nothing to lose but they have time to reinvent themselves between 2008 and 2016.
Palin does have certain leadership skills: she can lead a mob at any time.