For the past few days, Sarah Palin has been beefing with Politico after Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei published an article about how the GOP establishment plans on "stopping" her presidential ambitions, such as they are, because they threaten their plans to unseat President Barack Obama in 2012. The Politico account was riven with anonymous sources -- because who did you think was going to comment on such a piece?
The people who write Palin's ideas for her hit back against the heavy reliance on anonymous sourcery in an email to the Daily Caller:
"The 'reporters' who continue to cite 'unnamed GOP-insiders' as hard news sources are deemed impotent by the American public as we rise up and say, 'The state of journalism today stinks. Let's clean it up and expect some accountability'," Palin wrote in an email to The Daily Caller.
Palin also mocked Politico's use of anonymous sources, saying, "I suppose I could play their immature, unprofessional, waste-of-time game, too, by claiming these reporters and politicos are homophobe, child molesting, tax evading, anti-dentite, puppy-kicking, chain smoking porn producers...really, they are... I've seen it myself...but I'll only give you the information off-the-record, on deep, deep background; attribute these 'facts' to an 'anonymous source' and I'll give you more."
The hilarious thing is that in a July dustup with Mitt Romney's campaign staff, Palin had previously decried the use of anonymous sources, through anonymous sources:
"It shocks me that anyone would try to do that," the aide said. "You'd think we'd all be working together toward a common goal - that being 2010 - and that should be the focus right now. Those who try to claim the mantle of Reagan would be good to follow one of his most sacred tenets."
"For Washington consultants to sit around and personally disparage the Governor anonymously to reporters is unfortunate and counterproductive and frankly immature," the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, continued.
Naturally, on that occasion, the Palin camp was happy to deliver its message on the pages of Politico.