Bachmann on Palin: Not going to give media ‘a mud-wrestling fight’

Michele Bachmann apparently is growing weary about questions about Sarah Palin.

“They want to see two girls come together and have a mud-wrestling fight, and I’m not going to give it to them,” Bachmann said during a campaign event in Charleston, S.C., Wednesday in response to a question from the crowd.

Bachmann was speaking at a park in Daniel Island in Charleston, part of a blitz that has seen her visit the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina this week.

At each turn, the telegenic congresswoman has faced comparisons to Palin, as both are camera-friendly conservative women with similar tea-party-infused messages. Both appeal to similar blocs of voters.

Bachmann has taken pains, as she did Wednesday, to mention her friendship with Palin. But despite Bachmann’s efforts to tamp down the idea of a rivalry, her own camp helped fashion that narrative earlier this month. In a radio interview, Bachmann advisor Ed Rollins derided Palin, saying she “hadn’t been serious in years.”

“She got the vice presidential thing handed to her,” Rollins said. “She didn’t go to work in the sense of trying to gain more substance. She gave up her governorship.”

Palin’s daughter, Bristol, hyping a new memoir, got into the act Tuesday, tweaking Bachmann for adopting her mother’s “look.”

“I think she dresses a lot like my mom,” Bristol told the celebrity news site PopEater. “But a lot, a lot of women have done that the last few years. I do think it’s odd, you know, seeing people with red blazers with their hair up with glasses.”

The story said Bristol added, “I don’t know if she’s wearing glasses but you want to be hmmmm, do you think that people don’t notice you’re dressing like my mom?”

A day after Bachmann made her presidential campaign debut in Iowa, Palin traveled to the town of Pella to attend the official premiere of “The Undefeated,” the uncritical look at her political rise in Alaska. There, Palin gave no inclination about whether she will run for president.

Like Palin, Bachmann has also embarked on a tour in a brightly painted bus. She unveiled the bus Tuesday evening and will spend Wednesday rolling through the state. She’ll finish the day at a town-hall style meeting in Rock Hill, S.C.