George Bush blames Palin for 2008 election defeat

The timing may be coincidental, but days before the launch of his autobiography,  Decision Points, the views of former US president George W Bush on the darling of the Tea Party movement, Sarah Palin, have come to light - and they are not positive.
 
Bush apparently lost his respect for John McCain when he discovered that he had picked Palin as his running mate, and lays the blame for the Republicans' defeat in the 2008 election squarely at her door.
 
His opinions are aired in the New York Daily News, which interviewed a Republican insider close to the 43rd president of the US. The un-named adviser told the paper: "Bush... thinks McCain ran a lousy campaign with an unqualified running mate and destroyed any chance of winning by picking Palin."
 
The paper also reports that Bush believes Barack Obama has failed as President, but "won't trash him". Although he thinks Obama has made mistakes in foreign policy he supports the troop surge and drone strikes in Afghanistan .
 
Whether the comments were officially sanctioned by Bush is unclear, but he reportedly has a policy of never allowing criticism of other politicians to be directly attributed to him.
 
Palin has yet to respond, but earlier this week she managed to elicit an apology from Bush’s senior strategist Karl Rove after he appeared to question her gravitas.
 
He suggested that if she was serious about becoming president she should think twice about appearing in reality TV shows such as her new series about Alaska, which starts this month.
 
But on Thursday night Rove backtracked and told Fox News: "I didn't mean offence by it, and I'm sorry if she took it." ·