<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Nicolle Wallace is settled into a corner table at Fred&amp;#039;s, a swank caf\u00E9 at Barneys in Manhattan, dressed casually in jeans. It&amp;#039;s surprising that she picked this spot, given her history: As an adviser to Sarah Palin, she has been blamed for Palin&amp;#039;s infamous $150,000 shopping spree (which included purchases from this very store), among other campaign debacles. But Wallace, 37, is here to talk about her next step \u2014 and she doesn&amp;#039;t want any guff. &amp;quot;You give me any lip,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m out of here. I&amp;#039;ve got embryos on ice.&amp;quot;  It&amp;#039;s a joke \u2014 kind of. She&amp;#039;s given everything to an unimaginably demanding career, which has meant putting motherhood on hold. As a loyal Republican foot soldier, she&amp;#039;s spent the past 12 years rising through the ranks, eventually landing in the White House. Trained under GOP mastermind and Bush consigliere Karl Rove, she helped label John Kerry a &amp;quot;flip-flopper&amp;quot; in 2004, then went on to serve as Bush&amp;#039;s communications director before becoming a senior adviser to John McCain, who tapped her to chaperone Palin through the treacherous world of national politics.  It should have been a dream job. But as the campaign careened off course, everyone from pundits to Palin supporters pointed fingers at Wallace \u2014 Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes called her the &amp;quot;coward&amp;quot; behind the shopping orgy, and National Review blogger David Frum accused her of spreading rumors that Palin wasn&amp;#039;t up to the task of vice president. Wallace was an easy target \u2014 a woman in the ultimate boys&amp;#039; club. &amp;quot;I wish I could say I don&amp;#039;t care,&amp;quot; says Wallace, a pretty, freckly blonde, who denies taking Palin on the shopathon but owns up to helping the candidate &amp;quot;prepare&amp;quot; for the much-mocked interview with Katie Couric. &amp;quot;I was blindly loyal to the McCain-Palin ticket. As a staffer, you&amp;#039;d walk through fire.&amp;quot; She picks at her chopped salad. &amp;quot;To think I&amp;#039;ve always been loyal...&amp;quot; Loyal in spite of having grown up in serious blue-state territory, just across the bay from San Francisco, and later attending hippie haven Berkeley. She&amp;#039;s been a longtime believer in the GOP, and says she has kept in touch with the McCain family following the election, most recently having dinner with daughter Meghan McCain.  Although she won&amp;#039;t admit to flat-out regrets, Wallace seems eager to put the bruising political season behind her. &amp;quot;I am very joyfully sliding back into obscurity,&amp;quot; she says, noting that random strangers recognized her on the street during the height of the election frenzy. &amp;quot;My professional life will never involve working on a campaign again.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s time, she says, to have children with her husband, Mark Wallace, a high-powered Republican lawyer she met while working on the 2000 Florida recount. &amp;quot;My life&amp;#039;s ambition is to start a family and to be a good wife and sister and daughter,&amp;quot; she says, explaining that she&amp;#039;s undergoing IVF treatments to help kick-start the process. In the meantime, she&amp;#039;s writing a chick-lit novel, about three women at the top of their careers, including \u2014 surprise \u2014 the first woman president. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.marieclaire.com/politics/news/a2936/nicolle-wallace-sarah-palin/>