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Erickson, Radtke, Riehl, Brietbart and Malkin have all opted not to endorse a presidential candidate at this point, but the spat over Radtke seems to make apparent the direction in which at least some of the most influential conservative commentators are leaning, if Palin jumps into the race next month.

The would-be presidential rivals themselves have unsurprisingly stayed above the fray. Palin and Perry have enjoyed a friendly public relationship, and the former Alaska governor gave the Texan a major boost in his 2010 primary fight by endorsing him over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

Conventional wisdom has held that Palin and Perry occupy a similar niche within the Tea Party movement and that the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee might stay out of the race and instead endorse the three-term governor. But there are several indications that Palin is disinclined to get behind Perry at this stage in the game.

In a Facebook post last month, Palin wrote that the office of the presidency “requires a strong chief executive who has been entrusted with real authority in the past.” Her use of the adjective “strong” was interpreted by many of her supporters to be a subtle reference to the relatively weak power of the office of governor in Texas -- compared to Alaska’s, which is one of the most constitutionally robust in the nation.

When RCP asked Palin during her recent visit to the Iowa State Fair about how her record would stand up against Perry’s, she praised Perry before more explicitly contrasting the power of Alaska’s governorship with that of Texas.

“I’m glad he’s entering the race, even though he said he wouldn’t,” she added.

While their small-government ideologies and down-home styles hold some similarities, Palin and Perry come from entirely different worlds politically.

A master tactician who has exceeded expectations in just about every campaign he’s ever run, Perry is also one of the Republican Party’s most prolific fundraisers -- a title that has helped propel him into the national front-runner slot for the Republican nomination, but also one that has raised questions.

The New York Times reported on Sunday that Perry has taken full advantage of lax campaign finance laws to disperse “grants, tax breaks, contracts and appointments to hundreds of his most generous supporters and their businesses.”

Palin, on the other hand, saw her political rise in Alaska fueled in large part by her instinctive antipathy toward the influence of money in politics, which fit perfectly the mood among voters in the 49th state in the wake of a high-profile corruption scandal that swept through the halls of power in Juneau during her 2006 gubernatorial campaign.

During her 2008 vice-presidential run, Palin consistently pushed back at the fundraiser-intensive schedule that the McCain campaign had set up for her and was always far more comfortable on the rope line than she was on the rubber chicken circuit, according to former aides.

An endorsement from either side might very well come at some point in the campaign, but the increasingly open warfare that is being waged in the conservative blogosphere is one sign that the apparent surrogates for the two prospective rivals are hunkering down in their trenches.

“Palin courts a more independent, slightly more free-thinking constituency than Perry,” Riehl told RCP in an interview on Thursday, adding more fuel to the fire. “I think the best thing that anyone ever did for RedState was Perry announcing there.”