Former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin kicked off a media blitz this week to promote her memoir, "Going Rogue." The book, already atop the Amazon.com bestseller list, wasn't available for public viewing until today but has already sparked controversy. Based on a few advance review copies and released excerpts from its publisher HarperCollins, Palin appears to be using ''Going Rogue'' to settle old scores from the 2008 campaign and position herself as a future leader of the Republican Party.

A review published in The New York Times on Sunday described the book as ''Palin's payback'' to figures in John McCain's presidential campaign who plucked her from relative obscurity but disparaged her in the press after the election. Among Palin's claims are that she was charged $50,000 by the campaign to cover the cost of her vetting, that she was forced to go on what became a controversial $150,000 shopping spree, and that she granted the now-infamous interview to Katie Couric out of pity for the CBS anchor's "low self-esteem" only after incessant pressure. Most of Palin's ire is directed at McCain strategists Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace, who have both vehemently responded to Palin's charges. Schmidt calls the book "all fiction," while Wallace says that Palin's assertions about her are "totally the opposite" of what happened. The book has so incensed some McCain aides that - according to ABC News - on a conference call last week, McCain himself had to ask that they avoid engaging in public discussion of the book beyond correcting factual inaccuracies.
Backing up Schmidt and Wallace is a scathing Associated Press "fact check" of Palin's memoir, which said that the "book reprises familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven't become any truer over time," adding that Palin seems to have ignored "substantial parts of her record if not the facts" in piecing together the contents of her memoir. While Palin has ruffled the feathers of ex-McCain staffers and of fact checkers, she does seem to be reaffirming and perhaps enhancing her standing with the Republican Party's right wing. Many prominent conservatives have recently spoken out in favor of her and the book. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called "Going Rogue" "truly one of the more substantive policy books I've read" and charged that the AP's reporting on the book was "nonsense." Meanwhile, former New York City mayor and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani told CNN he thinks Palin is "great for the Republican Party" and that she could potentially provide the party with a "pretty strong alternative" to President Obama in the 2012 election. Although some pundits do think it's possible for Palin to win the Republican nomination in 2012, to win in the general election she'll have to find a way to gain the support of both the party's moderates and the rest of the country. Last weekend, prominent conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks dismissed her as a ''joke'' and a ''potential talk show host,'' and recent polling has shown that a significant majority of Americans feel she is unfit to be president.

While the future of Sarah Palin's political ambitions obviously remains to be seen, there is one thing that does seem absolutely certain at this point: She's not going away anytime soon.

-- Brett Michael Dykes is a contributor to the Yahoo! News Blog