Staff infection: Allies rip Palin team - Greta's husband (advisor to Phalin) partly to blame.

[jefferson_dem]

Staff infection: Allies rip Palin team
By ANDY BARR & JONATHAN MARTIN | 3/29/09 10:33 AM EDT

A seemingly unending series of public relations gaffes has Sarah Palin loyalists frustrated and worried she is diminishing her stature. And they blame an inner circle they say is composed of not-ready-for-primetime players.

Interviews with Alaska and Washington-based GOP political professionals who are familiar with the Palin operation describe the governor’s team as a gang that couldn’t shoot straight, a staff whose failure to execute basic political maneuvers too often entangles the governor in awkward and embarrassing situations that could have easily been avoided.

The state of confusion is compounded by two separate Palin spheres that don’t communicate with each other, one based in the governor’s office and another based in the D.C.-area, where Palin’s political action committee is located—and the incongruous presence of a high-profile Democratic trial lawyer among her political advisers.

The lawyer, John Coale, is a former supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign who became a Palin confidante as his wife, Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, interviewed the former GOP vice presidential nominee and her family numerous times during and after the election.

Their presence around Palin has become Topic A among many of her allies as well as other Republican insiders who are mystified as to why an anti-abortion rights conservative who ran against Washington elites is now turning to a pair of capital insiders for counsel.

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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20603.html

[TwilightGardener]

1. Her fifteen minutes should have been over after the turkey slaughter.

[Merlot]

2. "diminishing her stature"

yea, like that's going to be difficult...

[Jennicut]

3. Why is Greta's husband so into her?

"The lawyer, John Coale, is a former supporter of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign who became a Palin confidante as his wife"

I will never get the Hillary supporters who turned to Palin after she lost the nomination-their social views are so different.

[ErinBerin84]

4. Greta is apparently not pleased!

I don't get her defense. Wasn't the article mostly about her HUSBAND, and not her? THough it's clear that she's as obsessed with the Palin's as Nancy Grace is with the Caylee Anthony case. And Greta....it is not a snow machine. Just give it up.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/29/greta-van-susteren-rips-i_n_180465.html



Greta denied she has ever offered Palin political advice:

"Advice from me? huh? I am flattered someone would think people take advice from me but this is fanciful.

Note that it is from a "source" -- is that code for phoney? In this instance yes. This is why I hate "sources" and where journalism can be grossly unfair -- in the law you have to step up on the witness stand and identify yourself and take an oath to tell the truth. You can't do a "hit and run!"

I have never given Governor Palin advice - she does not need it from me. I don't even have her phone number or her email address. I don't think I have ever had a conversation with her off camera and if I have, it was 45 seconds! The goal is to get tape so you run the camera every second. When you do interviews with politicians, you interview and the politician runs to the next event or interview. Even when we did the interview at her home in Alaska post election, we did the interview in the home with her in her kitchen, another news organization was standing by and followed with their interview (I think it was the Anchorage Daily News) while we went outside to interview her husband on his snow machine."


Van Susteren also defended her husband's work, saying he merely "helped with the PAC ...