Palin accuses Rouse of stealing "change" & organizing attacks against her

[sonomak]

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/10/new-chief-of-staff-with-alaskan-roots-not-liked-by-sarah-palin.html

The low-key Pete Rouse, whom President Obama will name chief of staff on an interim basis later this morning, has at least one high-profile detractor: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Palin has suggested that Rouse was one of the driving forces behind attacks against her.

... Continued Palin: "Their arguments fit the bill. Those who have seen this before traced the ethics attacks back to the period when I was being vetted for the vice presidential slot and also linked them to the partisan investigation known in the media as 'Troopergate.' Walt Monegan knew that I was well within my rights to remove him, and in normal times it would have been a nonissue, but a few days later, the troopers' union and a group of Democrats with close ties to a senior adviser to the Obama campaign, Pete Rouse, then Senator Obama's chief of staff, were demanding an investigation.”...

Palin also suggested that then-Sen. Obama lifted the incredibly common campaign theme of “change” from her gubernatorial campaign. “Every part of our campaign shouted 'Change!'” she wrote. “We were amused a couple of years later when Barack Obama, one of whose senior advisers (come to think of it) had roots in Alaska-- adopted the same theme.”...

After Palin resigned her governorship, Palin adviser Meg Stapleton told TIME that attacks against the governor and her family were from the White House... The magazine wrote that “Palin and her Alaska circle find evidence for their suspicions about the White House in the person of Pete Rouse, who lived in Juneau for a time before he became chief of staff to a young U.S. Senator named Barack Obama. Rouse, they note, is a friend of former Alaska state senator Kim Elton, who pushed the first ethics investigation of Palin, examining her controversial firing of the state's public-safety commissioner. Both Rouse and Elton have joined the Obama Administration.”