Michele Bachmann's top aide dismissed Sarah Palin as 'not serious.' | AP Photos Stars collide: Bachmann vs. Palin

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s prospective 2012 campaign appears increasingly set on a collision course with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

The coming confrontation is being driven by a belief in Bachmann’s camp that the same grassroots, conservative primary voters and caucus-goers may have to choose between the two women—and that they will choose Bachmann if she presents herself as a more seasoned, reliable, and serious conservative than her high-profile rival. The apparent effort to draw distinctions broke into the open Tuesday when her new top strategist, Ed Rollins, dismissed Palin as “not serious” in a radio interview.


He suggested in an interview with POLITICO that Bachmann would profit from the contrast.

Bachmann will “be so much more substantive,” Rollins said. “People are going to say, ‘I gotta make a choice and go with the intelligent woman who’s every bit as attractive.’” (See also: Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann size each other up)

“I’m not afraid of Palin,” he said, adding the strategy would have been the same for Mike Huckabee. (See also: Ed Rollins hops on Michele Bachmann bandwagon)

Bachmann has been laying the groundwork for this argument for months, stepping away from some of the more dramatic rhetoric that brought her to prominence in the heady, early days of the Tea Party movement, and making a case more focused on the nuts and bolts of policy and on the unabashed social conservatism that has served many candidates well in they key early state of Iowa. She has been tightening her focus as Palin offers herself as an increasingly high-profile, if unfocused, cultural celebrity with an East Coast bus tour last week and a laudatory new movie set for release. (See also: Michele Bachmann touts tangible conservative record)

Aides to Palin didn’t respond to inquiries about Rollins’ comments, but a writer on the blog that serves as her supporters’ main voice, Conservatives4Palin, demanded that the Minnesota congresswoman “either affirm her support for the long-time beltway fossil’s idiotic comments…or refudiate them.”

While Bachmann may find some advantages in a contrast with Palin, it’s an approach that could easily backfire. Palin remains broadly popular with the conservative voters who will decide the Republican nomination, and her endorsement will be avidly sought if she doesn’t run.

“I think it is ill advised,” said Republican strategist Curt Anderson, who wondered if Rollins’ repeated jabs were more improvisation than strategy. “Why would you attack a barracuda?”

But Rollins isn’t the only Bachmann ally spoiling for a fight with Palin. A second top Bachmann ally — who spoke on the condition of anonymity — said Bachmann is well-positioned to take on Palin in the Iowa caucuses.

“The view in Iowa is that she’s unstable,” said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “When she resigned her position as governor that whole event seemed odd, and people in Iowa saw that.”

Palin and Bachmann remain public allies, a relationship cemented when the Alaskan stumped for the congresswoman in her Minnesota district during her hard-fought, expensive, and polarizing 2010 re-election. But sources in both camps said there are signs that the private relationship is also fraying. (See also: Michele Bachmann: Sarah Palin is not a competitor)

Though the Minnesota event was a public and fundraising success, it ended, a Republican source said, with tensions over logistics. And since then, a Palin associate said, Palin has expressed “disdain” for the congresswoman, whom many of her supporters see as merely riding Palin’s wake.

Palin’s PAC treasurer, Tim Crawford, said the the notion Palin dislikes Bachmann “not true whatsoever” and noted that “Michele was the first person Sarah campaigned for in the 2010 cycle.”

Bachmann doesn’t have any personal animus toward the former governor – two people close to her said she has the same warm words for Palin in private as in public – but has never suggested that the two are close. Asked by CBS last month if she’d talked to Palin about her decision to run for president, Bachmann quipped that she’d love to, but “I don’t have her cell phone number.”

And Rollins, in his appearance Tuesday on Fox News Radio’s “Kilmeade and Friends,” seemed to telegraph the direction of her campaign.

“Sarah has not been serious over the last couple of years,” he said. “She got the vice presidential thing handed to her, she didn’t go to work in the sense of trying to gain more substance, she gave up her governorship.”

“Michele Bachmann and others [have] worked hard,” he said. “She has been a leader of the Tea Party which is a very important element here, she has been an attorney, she has done important things with family values.”