Why is Politico trying to create a Palin vs Bachmann feud?

Last night, retracto at Big Government strongly suggested Politico authors Paul Goldman and Mark Rozell correct and retract their claim that Sarah Palin demanded she should get the credit for building the TEA party constituency especially since she’s taking constant beating in the media. Of course, Politico made up the entire thing.

The original Politico post by Goldman and Rozell first three paragraphs included the following, with my emphasis in bold.

Will Sarah Palin’s intensifying rivalry with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) cause the former Alaska governor to run for president?

The first female Republican vice presidential nominee clearly believes she is the one who has paid the heavy dues by bearing the brunt of the “liberal elite” attacks to help build the tea party, social conservative wing of the GOP.

Palin’s bus tour had some of the hallmarks of a primal scream: “I built this constituency, not Bachmann, not anyone else,” she said. Looking at it through her eyes, she has a point.

Of course, the quote was a total and complete fabrication, and when Politico did update the opinion piece this morning, they claimed it was an editor’s error.

An editing error caused a false attribution in an earlier version of this column. A comment by the authors was transformed into a direct quote from Sarah Palin. She never said the words attributed to her. Those words were written by the authors.

Here’s the problem for Politico as far as I can tell. The entire piece written by Goldman and Rozell was specifically based on the fake quote attributed to Palin. With that in mind, the entire piece should have been killed.

Sure, it’s an opinion piece and no doubt, there are quite a few conservatives and Republicans who are not interested in having Palin run for president. Fine … that’s nothing new and it’s happened since the beginning of time.

Politico … I’m certain there may be internal discussions and disagreements between staffs, but don’t let Democrat operatives make crap up out of thin air and post it.