McCain campaign chief: Palin would be 'catastrophic' as GOP nominee

The bad blood between top aides to Senator John McCain and his running mate last year, Sarah Palin, apparently is lingering.

Steve Schmidt, McCain's presidential campaign manager, didn't have very nice things to say today about Palin's prospects as a presidential candidate in 2012.

"I think that she has talents," Schmidt said at The Atlantic magazine's "First Draft of History Conference" in Washington. "But my honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate for the Republican Party in 2012, and in fact, were she the nominee, we could have a catastrophic election result."

"I don't think it's inconceivable that she could be the Republican nominee for president of the United States," he said. "I do think it's fairly inconceivable that she could be elected President of the United States."

McCain's top aides clashed with Palin and her aides behind the scenes last year as she started to outshine McCain and draw bigger crowds and didn't always follow the campaign script, then disparaged her for, among other things, padding her campaign wardrobe.

Palin will get to air her side in what is shaping up to be a best-selling book, with a first printing of 1.5 million. Palin's memoir, titled "Going Rogue," has zoomed to No. 1 on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com just two days after the publisher announced it had moved up the release date to Nov. 17.