Sweet fancy Moses. How bad could the blood between them possibly be to warrant this snub?

NBC's @KellyO reports: Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has not been invited to attend memorial services for John McCain

— Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) August 29, 2018

10 years ago today, @SenJohnMcCain named @SarahPalinUSA as his running mate. She is not expected to attend memorial. The McCain family has not commented on the invitation guest list.

— Kelly O'Donnell (@KellyO) August 29, 2018

Palin family source says, “Out of respect to Senator McCain and his family we have nothing to add at this point. The Palin family will always cherish their friendship with the McCains and hold those memories dear.”

— Kelly O'Donnell (@KellyO) August 29, 2018

O’Donnell doesn’t explicitly say that Palin wasn’t invited but it’s unimaginable that she’d boycott the funeral if an invitation had been extended.

Here she was a few days ago remembering her running mate:

John McCain was my friend. I will remember the good times. My family and I send prayers for Cindy and the McCain family.
– Sarah Palin and family pic.twitter.com/KRvcIQ99cA

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) August 26, 2018

There are few politicians whom Palin’s fans disliked more than McCain and yet she’s almost always been complimentary of him personally. He’s a hero, she’d say, year after year, a man she’ll always look up to even as populists were screaming that he’s an open-borders globalist and a traitor who ratted people out to the Vietnamese. I say “almost always” because there’s the small matter of the interview she gave to the Daily Mail a few days ago, after he passed away…

‘I respect his military service. I think it’s unfortunate that he had people around him – and they continued to be around him for a very long time – who weren’t serving him well,’ she said.

‘They certainly weren’t serving the country well with what they were trying to do.’

‘I believe he was told things about what America really wanted or really needed because he’s been in that DC bubble for so many years.

‘I don’t think inherently he necessarily was really connected, so he did rely on people telling him – in polls – telling him and…he went from there.

“McCain is an out-of-touch dupe led around by the nose by his handlers” is … not a great parting message, granted. But her Twitter tribute was strong and it’s not as though Maverick was unfailingly respectful of Palin through the years. How many times had he let it be known since 2008, whether through surrogates or ultimately from his own lips, that he wished he’d chosen Joe Lieberman instead of her as VP? As much as that stung, even then Palin tried to deflect blame from McCain himself by attributing the sentiment to his “ghostwriters.” She had every political incentive over the past 10 years to join in the merry trashing of Maverick by the GOP base. She declined.

Bear in mind too that McCain will be eulogized on Saturday by one guy who defeated him for the GOP nomination thanks to a scorched-earth smear campaign in South Carolina and by another guy who defeated him for the presidency by sporadically implying he was a racist. McCain had an enormous capacity to forgive his political rivals for their slights, even to the point of letting them speak at his memorial service. But … not Palin, I guess.

The amazing thing about the snub is that refusing to offer an invitation costs more than extending one would. It would have been the easiest thing to say “let bygones be bygones,” have Palin quietly attend, and thus avoid any headlines about her not being asked to show up. To absorb coverage like this the McCains really must have wanted her to stay away, a dishonor otherwise seemingly reserved for their least favorite people. That’s a shame.