Alaskans for an Independent Palin?

A Politico.com article raises the question in Guambat's mind whether there is a AIP (see title) movement afoot. Though nasty things have been said over Sarah's relationship to the Alaska Independence Party, this is not that. Well, not exactly.

This event is, perhaps, more in the nature of the broader blame game allegedly going the GOP rounds.

The article says,

stirrings of a Palin insurgency are complicating the campaign's already-tense internal dynamics.

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.

a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, said Palin had begun to "go rogue" in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.

"I think she'd like to go more rogue," he said.

The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party

"These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves," a McCain insider said

But other McCain aides, defending Wallace, dismissed the notion that Palin was mishandled. The Alaska governor was, they argue, simply unready — "green," sloppy and incomprehensibly willing to criticize McCain for, for instance, not attacking Sen. Barack Obama for his relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. [Palin has her own Rev. Wright in the name of Joe Vogle, and perhaps McCain was wise enough to realize such an attack could backfire, or perhaps he understands that two wrongs don't make a Wright.]

"She was completely mishandled in the beginning. No one took the time to look at what her personal strengths and weaknesses are and developed a plan that made sense based on who she is as a candidate," the aide said. "Any concerns she or those close to her have about that are totally valid."

But the aide said that Palin's inexperience led her to her own mistakes:

"How she was handled allowed her weaknesses to hang out in full display."

If McCain loses, Palin's allies say that the national Republican Party hasn't seen the last of her.