Michele Bachmann vs. Sarah Palin: In the end, can there be only one?

Before last week, it seemed like Michele Bachmann had a real opportunity to wrest votes away from other GOP presidential contenders in states that most respond to her blend of Christian-centric values and tea-infused rhetoric, such as Iowa and South Carolina. But that was before a certain brightly painted bus stormed up the East Coast.

Sarah Palin’s reemergence as a possible candidate could very well deeply threaten Bachmann’s budding venture. Fair or not, both women--unabashedly conservative, sharp-edged, attractive, charismatic--are frequently lumped together, as if there’s one pocket of voters and donors out there for either one, as if elections always break down cleanly along demographic lines.

Bachmann, the Minnesota congresswoman, has played down any talk of rivalry. Last week, her comments on Fox News’ “Hannity” were emblematic of how she’s dealt with the growing suggestion that there’s only room for one of them in the presidential field.

“I want to say that we are friends,” Bachmann said. “And I consider her a good friend. And I think that she is making wonderful contributions to our country. And I’m thankful that she is doing the tour. She is bringing attention to our nation’s heritage, and that is all positive.”

But on Tuesday, a different signal emanated from Bachmann’s camp. Her newly hired political consultant, the veteran Ed Rollins, went after Palin—hard—on a radio show.

“Sarah has not been serious over the last couple of years,” Rollins told Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade. “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.”

By contrast, Rollins said, “Michele Bachmann and others [have] worked hard, she has been a leader of the “tea party” . . . she has been an attorney, she has done important things with family values.”

Rollins later upped the ante in an interview with Politico, in which he declared, “I’m not afraid of Palin.”

Hiring Rollins, a former adviser to Ronald Reagan who recently aided Mike Huckabee’s 2008 campaign, is a fairly clear sign that Bachmann is set to run and that she’ll do so in her characteristic scorched-earth manner. (She has said she’ll make an announcement about her plans later this month in Iowa.)

But using him as an attack-dog is a high-risk strategy. If Palin doesn’t end up running, then Rollins may have alienated the very voters that Bachmann will soon be courting.

(Mother Jones pointed out Wednesday that Rollins a few months back on CNN denigrated Bachmann similarly, saying she wasn’t a “serious player.” But that was before Bachmann hired him, naturally.)

But there is also a method to the move. Bachmann has a different story to tell than Palin, one that involves her work as a foster parent to 23 children, as an everyday legislator (who continues to show up for work), and as a tax lawyer. Then there is the effort she’s been putting on the ground with evangelicals and “tea-party” activists, distinguishing herself again from Palin, who instead seems to be so far banking on her sizable celebrity.

After Palin wrapped up her tour, Bachmann, along with other GOP contenders, spent the weekend in Washington addressing a gathering of religious conservatives. Palin was a no-show, instead granting an interview to Fox News and trying to explain away her account on Paul Revere’s ride, a fast-moving media squall that potentially wiped away any new wellspring of goodwill the tour had created.

Bachmann, at times, has had her Palinesque problems too—staring into the wrong camera while giving a “tea-party” response to the president’s State of the Union address and suggesting in a speech that the battles of Lexington and Concord occurred in New Hampshire. But at this point in the race, she seems determined to try and outwork Palin.

Whether that ends up being enough to blunt the latter’s off-the-charts name recognition could make for one of the more compelling dramas to play out over the next several months.