Michele Bachmann's top adviser Ed Rollins denounced fellow brown-haired Tea-Partying maybe-presidential candidate Sarah Palin as unserious Tuesday, offering maybe the first sign that the Palin-Bachmann spat so many have been waiting for is finally upon us. "Sarah has not been serious over the last couple of years," Rollins said on Fox News' Brian Kilmeade's radio show. "She got the vice presidential thing handed to her. She didn't go to work in the sense of trying gain more substance. She gave up her governorship."

Rollins then praised the work ethic of his boss. "You know, I think Michele Bachmann and others have worked hard. She has been a leader of the Tea Party, which is a very important element here," he added. Bachmann is "the one that intrigues me the most at this point and I think to a certain extent she's articulate, she’s a conservative. She's got a great story to tell. She's on the Intelligence Committee. You know, she's unknown to the national audience, but she'll become known and that's the candidacy that I'm going to work for if she runs."

Rollins attacked Palin for being flakey in December, a move many assumed was to help his old boss Mike Huckabee, whose 2008 campaign Rollings managed. Bachmann hired him recently as she's been gearing up to announce whether she's running for president this month, and Hot Air's Allahpundit wonders, "did Bachmann hire Rollins in spite of his criticisms of Palin--or because of them?" Allahpundit thinks Bachmann has politics that are too similar to Palin's, so she has to distinguish herself by her experience and personality. And Bachmann does need to distinguish herself: a new Gallup poll shows that Bachmann has better favorability ratings than Palin--who has high negatives--but the Minnesotan is not as well known. Still, since March, her name recognition has jumped from 52 percent to 63 percent.

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Elspeth Reeve