Palin goes 'rogue'?

BUMPED (UPDATES BELOW): And not a moment too soon:

Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those 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 said early and often that the Palin rollout -- with the McCain campaign going out of its way to keep Palin away from the media -- was mishandled:

If she can't handle a press conference, how can you argue she's ready to be vice president? This fear-based, defensive, curl-up-inside-your-shell posture toward the press is killing the GOP. It's insane: Treat the press like the enemy and then complain about media bias. Oh, I wish Tony Snow were still alive to explain to these "senior campaign officials" why this approach doesn't work.

If nothing else has been gained in this campaign, at least the "Tucker Bounds School" of Republican media strategy has been exposed as the wrongheaded nonsense it is.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

UPDATE: A professional Republican Party operative strikes back against the candidate:

Palin spokesperson, Tracey Schmitt responded to the article, "Unnamed sources with their own agenda will say what they want, but from Governor Palin down we have one agenda, and that's to win on Election Day."

Professional political operatives -- the GOP's hired help -- think of themselves as more important than the candidates themselves, and infinitely more important than the voters. The Republican Party, you see, has been captured by its own bureaucracy. This top-down approach to politics is why rank-and-file conservatives feel so disempowered.

UPDATE II: CNN adds more:

A second McCain source says [Palin] 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.
The Politico reported Saturday on Palin's frustration, specifically with McCain advisers Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt. They helped decide to limit Palin'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."

Oh, yeah, Nicolle Devenish Wallace, who thinks that candidates don't need to talk to reporters:

Another Republican media operative who -- so far as I can tell from her biography -- has never worked a day as a reporter.