WASHINGTON—Weighing in at 318 pages, The Rogue isn’t merely an act of character assassination — it is one long, hard, steel spike through the political heart of Sarah Palin.

Whatever remote chance remained that the conservative firebrand might one day end up in the White House is poised to unravel Tuesday, when the controversial Joe McGinniss book hits stores.

Put aside the jaw-dropping allegations of cocaine and adultery. Forget about the claim Palin and former NBA player Glen Rice had a one-night tryst back in 1987, when she was a single young reporter and he was a university basketball player. And never mind the insider accounts of the almost Biblical vengeance Sarah and Todd Palin visited upon enemies, real or perceived, during the march from Wasilla, Alaska, to where they reside today, at the astronomically high-paying intersection of Washington and Hollywood.

The Sarah Palin portrayed in The Rogue is nothing short of a born-again hypocrite — and one so self-obsessed, yet so utterly unaware of herself, as to not even know it.

The best-kept secret in Palin’s closet, according to McGinniss, is not the sordid storyline of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll, but the extent to which Palin believes herself chosen by God to be the next president of the United States.

The “evangelical Kool-Aid” of extreme religiosity percolates throughout The Rogue, with Palin confidantes — some named, some not — detailing the out-there end-times theology they scrambled to keep a lid on, lest it go public.

For instance: God created Earth 6,000 years ago and populated it with mankind and dinosaurs. “Mankind had survived, dinosaurs had not. End of story,” writes McInnis.

Except the rest of the story is that these are the end-times, with The Rapture and the return of Jesus imminent. Palin is quoted by fellow Christian Phil Munger as certain all this will transpire in her lifetime. “Maybe you can’t see that but I can, and it guides me every day,” she says.

Yet within the fractious Palin household, another portrait emerges.

“There was no religion,” an insider reveals. “There was nothing about God. There was no Christ. Nobody prayed. No Bibles. No crosses. None of that was ever there. Never.”

Instead, this Palin home is a portrait in dysfunction, where days began with screaming demands for divorce amid children neglected by parents who themselves behaved like emotionally stunted teenagers.

A home from whence a miserable Todd Palin, in the early years at least, escaped regularly for extramarital trysts; and where Sarah is said to have returned the favour, at least once, to get her wayward hubby back in line.

A home from whence the Palin’s eldest son was allegedly shipped off to Iraq to rid the family of potential public-relations powder keg of an OxyContin-chomping vandal prone to violence.

A number of Alaskans share on-the-record close encounters with Planet Palin. But much of the most damning detail is presented under the cloak of anonymity that McGinniss claims to have provided reluctantly. The continuing fear of Palin retribution, the author argues, is alive and well in Wasilla.

One example: The author was already famously at rhetorical war with the Palins, having audaciously rented the house next to theirs in order to write the book. One day, McGinniss called in a local handyman, who arrived with cardboard duct-taped over his truck’s licence plates. “I don’t need any bulls--t from those paranoid f--kers next door,” the handyman explained.

McGinniss claims to have taken not a single photograph or recording of his neighbours during his time in Wasilla. But when Palin first learned the identity of her neighbour, a quick Facebook update alerted her online loyalists and suddenly, the 67-year-old author, his wife, his agent and his publisher were besieged with death threats, sparking national headlines

McGinniss, whose previous writings on Alaska were critically acclaimed, describes how some locals came to his rescue. The “Wasilla Welcome Wagon” included one group who brought him a flag and his choice of six handguns. Another stranger arrived with keys and a map to his house, telling McGinniss he was welcome anyone. “Hell, I’ve even got an AK-47 you might like.”

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The rented house was unfurnished and after buying two armchairs, McGinniss struggled to find someone willing to deliver, lest the Palins find out. Finally, Dewey Taylor, a retired schoolteacher, dropped off the furniture. The next night his truck had its driver’s-side window blown out as Taylor slept.

McGinnis describes the Palin practice of vanquishing enemies as a “potentially dangerous character flaw.”

“She has no sense of proportion, no ability to modulate her response. She’s over-the-top in all directions: rah-rah cheerleading for those she supports, spewing vitriolic condemnation of anyone who challenges her.

“If this is how she reactions, as a private citizen, to an unwelcome neighbour next door, what would she do as president if the Iranian government suddenly irked her?”

But McGinniss attributes much of that mindset as a consequence of life under father Chuck Heath, unearthing a story of how her father once whipped up an “ugly, violent mob” in Wasilla to protest the firing of a school principal — his close friend — who was fired for ignoring allegations that another teacher had molested as many as 17 girls in his Grade 3 class.

Said Pat O’Hara, a former school board member caught in the fracas: “Sarah learned from her father; if someone disagrees with you or does something you don’t like, annihilate first, ask questions later.”

McGinniss portrays Todd Palin’s transformation from a hard-drinking, womanizing, cocaine-binging good ol’ boy to an emasculated but vindictive presence today. “Clearly, being reduced to the role of chihuahua carried around in a rich lady’s purse is proving stressful for Todd.”

And he awakens doubts about the real Sarah Palin, gathering anecdotes that suggest she is neither a fisher nor much of a hockey mom, nor even the least bit interested in actual governance, having ruled Alaska partway through a single term with a mostly blank appointment book as she leafed through the pages of People.

The most scathing indictment, however, McGinniss saves for what Palin loves to call the “lamestream” media: Rather than taking her down, the media circus continually catches and resets Palin to a place of otherwise inexplicable prominence.

“Sarah Palin practises politics as lap dance, and we’re the suckers who pay the price,” he concludes.

“Members of our jaded national press corps eagerly stuff hundred-dollar bills in her G-string, even as they wink at one another to show that they don’t take her seriously.”