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…

“These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves,” said a McCain insider, referring to McCain’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin’s campaign. Palin’s partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin’s avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News’s Katie Couric, whose sometimes-painful content the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week…

[T]he final straw for Palin and her allies was the news that the campaign had reported spending $150,000 on her clothes, turning her, again, into the butt of late night humor.

“She never even set foot in these stores,” said the senior Republican, saying Palin hadn’t realized the cost when the clothes were brought to her in her Minnesota hotel room.