Rebecca Mansour, the adviser to Sarah Palin most closely associated with her post-Alaska political life, thinks Palin’s daughter Bristol is a political liability. That’s according to private communications published Tuesday morning by the Daily Caller that show Mansour comparing Bristol to other well-known relatives who have made life difficult for their famous political families.
“Two words: Patti Davis. Okay three more: Ron Reagan Junior,” Mansour said in a series of Twitter direct messages obtained by the caller. “Two more: Billy Carter. Doesn’t your family have one?”
Mansour said Palin’s eldest daughter won’t derail Palin’s future political ambitions.
“She will hold her at arm’s length,” Mansour wrote. “Even [Margaret] Thatcher was never able to disown her screw up son Mark. It’s a Mom thing”
The messages were sent to an unnamed “online-only acquaintance” of Mansour in 2010, described as a Palin supporter. Mansour first denied the messages were hers, the Caller reports, before admitting she sent them after being presented with evidence of their authenticity.
“Mansour said she was trying to ‘calm down’ a Palin supporter and that the messages reflected only her opinions, not Palin’s,” the website reports. “Mansour refused to provide additional context or information about the messages.”
She also begged the publication not to out her tweets:
Presented with this evidence, Mansour changed her story from an initial denial to anger (“this is really kind of skeezy”), bargaining (“can I just appeal to you to leave the Bristol stuff alone?”), and sadness at the consequences of her words (“this is going to destroy my reputation simply because people will say, ‘why were you sending a direct [message to a Palin activist]?’”).
The aide, who joined Palin’s inner-circle after launching the Conservatives4Palin website. In a March profile in the Los Angeles Times, her close connection to Palin is detailed:
Mansour helped Palin with research on her score-settling bestseller, and a few months later, Palin offered Mansour a job with SarahPAC, Palin’s political operation. She would write speeches and help Palin craft messages that would bypass the traditional media (the “lamestream media” in Palinspeak) and target Palin’s Facebook fans and Twitter followers, which now number 2.7 million and 428,000, respectively.
In the past, Palin has been quick to publicy condemn people who have said less than kind things about her family. It remains to be seen what the fallout from Mansour’s comments will be. But it seems clear from the Caller’s reporting that Mansour’s words got personal.
Other messages, including several TheDC has chosen not to publish, reveal details about the internal dynamics of the Palin family and Mansour asking the activist whether he knew “anyone upstanding? I’m serious?” who could replace Johnston as a suitable suitor for Bristol. But Mansour did add she was “impressed” by how much Bristol Palin loved her son.
Read the Daily Caller story on the Mansour messages here.
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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