Palin says attackers unprofessional

NY Times:

Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska fired back Friday at the unnamed McCain campaign aides who have been maligning her in recent days, saying that their criticism was “cruel and it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, it’s unprofessional, and those guys are jerks.”

Ms. Palin spoke out upon her return to the governor’s office here, defending herself from a barrage of criticism that has been aimed at her from unnamed McCain aides ever since the McCain-Palin ticket was defeated Tuesday.

The McCain campaign aides complained about the $150,000 that the Republican National Committee had spent on Ms. Palin’s clothes, the way a Canadian comedian was able to embarrass the campaign by calling her and pretending to be the president of France, and the political ambitions she seemed to harbor beyond 2008.

By the end of the week, their complaints had escalated considerably, with Fox News quoting unnamed McCain campaign officials as saying that Ms. Palin had not known that Africa was a continent, not a country, and claiming that she did not know which countries were covered by the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Ms. Palin told reporters in Alaska that the anonymous criticism was “cowardly,” and that she had discussed the campaign’s position on Nafta at her debate prep sessions.

“I remember having a discussion with a couple of debate preppers,” she said. “So if it came from one of those debate preppers, you know, that’s curious. But having a discussion about Nafta — not, ‘Oh my goodness, I don’t know who is a part of Nafta.’ ”

“So, no, I think that if there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about Nafta, and about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context,” Ms. Palin said. “And that’s cruel and it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, it’s unprofessional, and those guys are jerks, if they came away with it taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news. It is not fair and not right.”

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Ms. Palin said that her experience made her realize how brutal national politics could be. And she had some pungent criticism of the national news media, saying that there had been some bad apples in the bunch.

“For the most part, absolutely, media persons, reporters, have been absolutely right on and there has been fairness and objectivity,” she said. “There have been some stinkers, though, who have kind of made the whole basket full of apples, once in a while, smell kind of bad.”

Senior McCain aides had moved to quell the divisions earlier in the day. Nicolle Wallace, a senior McCain campaign aide who worked with Ms. Palin, defended her Friday on NBC’s “Today.”

“She is perhaps the most un-diva politician I’ve ever seen,” Ms. Wallace said. “The only thing I’ve ever seen her ask for is a diet soda.”

Randy Scheunemann — a foreign policy adviser to the campaign who some factions claimed was fired in the final week, but others said had not been — said that some of the claims about her were false, and ultimately damaging to Mr. McCain.

“The people that are spreading these lies refuse to go on the record,” Mr. Scheunemann said. “They obviously have no loyalty to John McCain or to the person John McCain chose to be his vice president.”

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The Times headline writer chose to put emphasis on the "jerk" comment rather than the unprofessional. I think the headline writer did that to make her look more emotional than the story would suggest. I chose "unprofessional" from her list of descriptive phrases because I think it best sums up her criticism as well as the conduct in question.

Her comments suggest she has a pretty good idea who the sources for the allegations against her are. You can bet they want be on the team she puts together for a future run if that happens. In fact they should not be on anyone's team. The kind of betrayal they engaged in shows them unqualified for a position of trust.

Debate prep is something like witness preparation for a trial. the focus of both is to come up with the best way to present your case. It requires that people be as candid as possible so that they can come up with that presentation. If you cannot trust those in the room with you to keep the discussions confidential, people will not be as candid and the presentation will suffer. It is not only unprofessional to break the confidence required for such a job it is unethical in the extreme. I can understand why she would think that those responsible for the allegations are jerks.

Gail Collins gives another reason the jerks should stop it.

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Palin says this is untrue. But the worst part is that if these people get any meaner, we’re going to wind up feeling sorry for her. This is not something we are looking forward to, Republicans, and we will resent you for it.

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This was in her column on healing the wounds of the election. She really knows how to reach across the aisle.

Senior McCain aides categorically denied most of the allegations against Gov. Palin. The Politico also gives the Palin side's case.