Palin didn’t ‘go rogue’ on Ayers attack

One of Sarah Palin’s most (in)famous moments during the 2008 campaign was launching the Bill Ayers attack on Obama. The Illinois Senator, Palin said, liked to “pal around with terrorists.”

McCain aides later accused Palin of “going rogue” and launching the attack prematurely. Palin supporters insisted she was acting at the behest of McCain’s strategists.

Marc Ambinder gets a sneak peak at Dan Balz’s and Haynes Johnson’s new book about the campaign, which seems to settle the matter once and for all. Balz and Johnson excerpt an email from some of McCain’s top strategists in which they explicitly instruct Palin to use the Ayers attack:

…The e-mail from [Nicole] Wallace, according to Balz and Johnson, reads as follows: “Governor and Team: rick [Davis], Steve [Schmidt] and I suggest the following attack from the new york times. If you are comfortable, please deliver the attack as written. Please do not make any changes to the below without approval from steve or myself because precision is crucial in our ability to introduce this.”

McCain HQ had suggested the following line: “This is not a man who sees American as you and I do — as the greatest force for good in the world. This is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country.”

So there you go. This has to be at least a little consolation for Palin supporters after McCain aides ripped her to shreds in a Vanity Fair article published recently.