Surrounding Herself with Amateurs Has Put Palin’s Future in Jeopardy

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Here’s a little bipartisanship for you. I, a bona fide member of the unprofessional left, agree with Jennifer Rubin, a conservative columnist for the rightward-tilting Washington Post op-ed page and who until recently wrote for right-wing Commentary magazine, that Sarah Palin is facing a career crisis of her own making, and that the crisis is a result of her decision to surround herself with amateurs and sycophants rather than seasoned political pros. Rubin writes:

It has been reported that that she is exceedingly insulated from experienced voices by a mini-staff in Alaska and her husband … A case in point is:

Rebecca Mansour who especially personifies the amorphous yet fervid network of Palin World. Mansour said . . . “I majored in English and history and minored in philosophy, but I’ve never been a Beltway person, so that does confuse people.”

And this person is “Palin’s primary speechwriter, researcher, online communications coordinator and all-purpose adviser.”

It was Mansour who went on a righty radio show hosted by former liberal (and current gay Stockholm-syndrome victim) Tammy Bruce last weekend to road test a new lie about the infamous crosshairs map Palin’s camp released last spring on which Giffords’ district was targeted, along with 19 others:

[…]

Verbatim

She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted … I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us — we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our childrens’ expectations.

— President Obama, remembering 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, who was killed by the gunman in Tucson last Saturday, at a memorial service for the victims Wednesday night.