Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin greets supporters after returning to Anchorage, Alaska on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008.
CTV.ca | Knives out for Palin: McCain aides tell tales of diva
WASHINGTON -- Sarah Palin wasn't aware that Africa was a continent and she and her brood behaved like a band of "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," aides to Republican John McCain are telling prominent news organizations.
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Less than 24 hours after McCain lost the presidential election to Democrat Barack Obama, those close to him apparently wasted no time burning up the phone lines to dish the dirt on Palin, the Alaska governor who portrayed herself as a sensible hockey Mom when she was chosen the Arizona senator's running mate in late August.
If the anonymous McCain insiders are to be believed, Palin, a 44-year-old mother of five, was unaware that Africa was a continent, arguing that South Africa was simply a region of the larger country of Africa.
She also didn't know the three countries that are in the North American Free Trade Agreement, namely Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
A call last week by a Quebec radio prankster pretending to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly became a fiery source of tension between the already feuding McCain and Palin camps. An aide to the Alaska governor, Steve Biegun, OK'd the call without discussing it with...
Another told Newsweek: "Gov. Palin was not directing staffers to put anything on their personal credit cards, and anything that staffers put on their credit cards has been reimbursed, like an expense."
On Wednesday in Phoenix, Palin said: "There is absolutely no diva in me."
Nonetheless, a Republican party lawyer is reportedly heading to Alaska to inventory and retrieve the clothes still in Palin's possession.
The tensions between the two camps reportedly continued even into election night, when Palin met up with McCain at the Biltmore hotel in Phoenix with a concession speech in hand that she wanted to deliver before he took to the podium to address his crestfallen supporters.
Much to her chagrin, she was told by senior McCain aides that such a speech would be inappropriate since vice-presidential nominees do not traditionally speak on election night.
The relationship between Palin and McCain, in fact, had deteriorated in the final days of the campaign to the point that they were seldom talking.
"I think it was a difficult relationship," one top McCain campaign official told the New York Times. "McCain talked to her occasionally."
On Wednesday, Palin disputed suggestions she contributed to McCain's loss, but said she was apologetic if she had.
"I don't think anybody should give Sarah Palin that much credit that I would trump an economic time in this nation that occurred about two months ago," she told CNN. "If I cost John McCain even one vote, I am sorry about that because John McCain, I believe, is the American hero."
And both of them hardly talking to one another and pretty much putting distance between each other by the time the election came around?
Could you even imagine if they actually won?
What a nightmare.
