WASHINGTON — A little more than a year ago, Michele
Bachmann and Sarah Palin stood happily together on a stage in
Minneapolis exhorting their “tea party” followers and trading “you
betchas.”
This week, their relationship changed. Bachmann’s new
strategist, Ed Rollins, launched into a harsh critique of Palin,
describing her as “not serious,” and what was once a natural alliance
has turned into a potential rivalry.
The collision may have been inevitable. Bachmann and
Palin appeal to the same stripe of the electorate and are strikingly
similar in style and ideology.
“Maybe there is only room for one articulate,
good-looking conservative broad in the race,” Minnesota GOP strategist
Sarah Janacek said. “We ain’t come that far, baby, I’ll tell you that.”
Bachmann’s camp has taken pains to distance itself
from Rollins’ comments, but the hard feelings already have set in. A
Palin aide has publicly asked for an apology. Others, including Fox News
talker Greta Van Susteren, are calling on Bachmann to dump Rollins —
who was hired only this week — before she formally announces her
candidacy in Iowa later this month.
“Is this how Representative Bachmann wants to start
her campaign … with a guy …that makes her look petty?” Van Susteren
blogged this week. Van Susteren, whose husband served as a Palin adviser
in the 2008 presidential campaign, noted that Palin was helping the
Minnesota Republican’s U.S. House re-election campaign when she appeared
with Bachmann last year at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
The contretemps between Bachmann and Palin has
exploded in the national media this week, intensifying the suspense
about whether the former Alaska governor will enter the 2012 race, where
she could be expected to claim many of the same activists who have come
out for Bachmann.
Some have detected a sexist tinge in the Washington
punditry, as on Wednesday, when a CNN guest referred to the growing
Bachmann-Palin rivalry as “the catfight of the century.”
“There is some logic in thinking that if they both
run in Iowa, they’ll compete for the same votes,” University of
Minnesota political scientist Kathryn Pearson said. “But there are white
men who look very similar to one another who are also competing for the
same voters, and we’re not seeing the same type of stories. So gender
has something to do with this.”
Bachmann aides did not respond to a request for
comment on the blowback from Rollins’ remarks. But Bachmann’s
congressional spokesman, Doug Sachtleben, issued a statement saying that
“the two enjoy a good friendship” and that Bachmann “has nothing but
admiration and respect for Governor Palin.”
Rollins, an old Washington hand who ran President
Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984, started the row on Tuesday, the
day after telling the media he would be running the Bachmann campaign.
As for Palin, Rollins told Fox News Radio host Brian
Kilmeade, “Sarah not been serious over the last couple of years,”
adding, “she got the vice presidential thing handed to her. She didn’t
go to work in the sense of trying to gain more substance. She gave up
her governorship.”
Hours later, Bachmann aide Andy Parrish, who had yet
to confirm Rollins’ role in the Bachmann campaign, e-mailed the Star
Tribune: “The congresswoman and Ms. Palin have an excellent
relationship. Rollins was in his media analyst role.”
Nevertheless, Palin aide Michael Glassner fired back
at Rollins the next day: “Beltway political strategist Ed Rollins has a
long, long track record of taking high profile jobs and promptly
sticking his foot in his mouth,” Glassner said in a statement. “To no
one’s surprise he has done it again, while also fueling a contrived
narrative about the presidential race by the mainstream media. One would
expect that his woodshed moment is coming and that a retraction will be
issued soon.”
But no retraction has been proffered. Instead,
Rollins told Politico that while he “missed a step” in his transition
from analyst to political strategist, he takes nothing back. “What’s the
retraction?” he said. “I say she’s serious?”
Bachmann aides declined to comment on Rollins’ past
criticism of Bachmann as well. In January, Rollins dismissed Bachmann’s
tea party response to the President Obama’s State of the Union address,
telling CNN “at the end of the day, we have to get our serious players
out front.”
Phone and e-mail messages left with Rollins’ public policy firm this week have not been returned.
Bachmann insiders have long speculated privately that
Palin will not enter the GOP nominating contest, leaving open the
possibility that many of her ardent tea party supporters could be up for
grabs.
But Rollins’ statements came as Palin has reignited
the media’s interest in her with a national bus tour that is sparking
speculation that she may jump in the race after all.
Analysts now are debating whether Rollins, who worked
on the presidential campaigns of Ross Perot and Mike Huckabee, grossly
miscalculated in unloading on a popular conservative such as Palin.
“It’s strategically puzzling,” said Pearson, noting that Bachmann can hardly afford to offend Palin’s tea party base.
In some tea party circles, Bachmann’s role in forming
a tea party caucus in Congress has been a double-edged sword. “She’s
looked at as more part of the establishment than Palin,” said Toni
Backdahl, a tea party activist from Plymouth, Minn. “Instead of
participating with grass-roots people, she had her marketing people
start their own tea parties.”
But Pearson and others recognize that Rollins could
also have been sending a signal to elite party donors and opinion
leaders, deliberately contrasting Palin’s pop culture image with
Bachmann’s credentials as a tax attorney, tea party leader and
three-term member of Congress.
Whether Rollins stays on the Bachmann campaign, that
message has been sent, Hamline University political scientist David
Schultz said.
“I think it’s a strategic move,” said Schultz, who
sees Rollins’ move as an effort to differentiate Bachmann and
delegitimize Palin.
“Most of us are thinking of Palin and Bachmann as
competing for the same tea party, social conservative, far-right of the
party,” he said. “Bachmann has to convince people in that part of the
party, ‘Don’t put your eggs in Palin’s basket.'”
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