At the Republican Governors meeting the other day, someone reportedly said the press conference “unfortunately sent a message that she was the de facto leader of the party” where ‘she’ is, of course, Governor Sarah Palin.
While she certainly has much to learn, my viewpoint is that Governor Sarah Palin is definitely the leader now, fortunately.
Maude's Tavern 
Governor Palin is an intelligent woman and probably didn’t do all the negative things some of the McCain staff claims she did. She did, of course, stick to the talking points she was probably given. But a leader she is not.
re “negative things some of the McCain staff” .. of course, as has recently come out, some of those “things” were not said by McCain staff at all but were rather, for example MSNBC falling for lefty blog/email misinformation (e.g. the “Africe a country” matter).
re 2, yahoo news has:
MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.
David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, had come forth and identified himself as the source of a Fox News Channel story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent.
Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. Yet neither he nor the institute exist; each is part of a hoax dreamed up by a filmmaker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Mirvish, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
The Eisenstadt claim had mistakenly been delivered to Shuster by a producer and was used in a political discussion Monday afternoon, MSNBC said.