Apparently, Palin has some party-loyalty problems at home. According to this ABC News article, Alaska's Republican senior Senator Ted Stevens is up for re-election in a tight race with Anchorage's mayor. Stevens had endorsed Palin when she ran for governor in '06 (not during her primary, but 3 weeks before the general election) and she publicly and enthusiastically accepted that endorsement. Problem is that now Stevens is under indictment for lying about political gifts received. In July of this year, before the indictment but after the FBI raided Stevens' home, Palin and Stevens held a joint news conference and said there was no political distance between them. However, now that Palin is on McCain's "maverick" platform, the McCain campaign is keeping mum about whether Palin will or will not support Stevens' campaign.

Yet more evidence that McCain didn't think through his choice for veep. Either McC has to look the other way while Palin endorses Stevens and tries to keep that Senate seat on the Republican side of the aisle (and shows the country that he's no maverick and that the GOP is the SOS), or he insists that she not endorse Stevens and he loses the Republican Senate seat and all the party-goodwill that he might have gained from Alaska by nominating their governor as VP. Idiot.