Fire up the JiffyPop, folks, because Michele Bachmann’s (R-Mars) new adviser Ed Rollins attacked Sarah “Bells” Palin yesterday, by telling the truth about her: Bachmann strategist blasts Palin: ‘Not serious’.

Michele Bachmann’s new top consultant, Ed Rollins, began his tenure with scathing criticism of potential Bachmann rival Sarah Palin.

“Sarah has not been serious over the last couple of years,” Rollins told Brian Kilmeade on his radio show, Kilmeade and Friends. “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.”

He suggested that the contrast would favor Bachmann.

“Michele Bachmann and others [have] worked hard, she has been a leader of the Tea Party which is a very important element here, she has been an attorney, she has done important things with family values.”

And today, Rollins is backpedaling — but not too strenuously: Bachmann adviser: ‘My misstep’ on Palin.

“As far as we’re concerned, it’s not” an ongoing fight, he insisted. “This was my one comment, which I shouldn’t have made, at the end of the day this has nothing to do with Michele, Michele’s campaign, or any of the rest of it. This was my transition from being an analyst to a political strategist, and I missed a step.” …

Of Team Palin’s call for a retraction, he said, “What’s the retraction? I say she’s serious?”

Of course, before he started taking paychecks from Bachmann’s PAC, Ed Rollins was singing a different tune: Bachmann’s Campaign Guru in January: She’s Not a ‘Serious Player’.

In late January, Rollins appeared on CNN, where he’s been a frequent commentator, to discuss the Republican Party’s response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. After praising Obama’s speech and the GOP’s official rebuttal, given by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Rollins dismissed Bachmann’s poorly produced “tea party response.” In doing so, Rollins questioned Bachmann’s role as a credible Republican leader. Moreover, he suggested Bachmann ought not be representing the Republican Party.

“Michele Bachmann obviously is a member of Congress and a representative of the tea party,” Rollins told CNN�viewers. “But at the end of the day, we have to get our serious players out front and talking about the things that matter to be the alternative to the president and Democrats.” In other words, he did not consider Bachmann a “serious”�GOP player. (Just this week, Rollins bashed another tea party leader, Sarah Palin, as someone who “has not been serious over the last couple of years.”)

More recently, Rollins dismissed Bachmann’s chances in the 2012 presidential race. In April, weeks after Bachmann revealed her plan to form a presidential exploratory committee, Rollins appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball and offered his two cents about what kind of politician would win the GOP nomination:

At the end of the day, you know, we’re going to have a candidate who has been a governor, I assume. There’s no Washingtonians in this mix. It ain’t going to be Donald Trump. I don’t think it’s going to be Congresswoman Bachmann.