Here is this week’s Capitol Watch, with our analysis on Tuesday’s election results.

An update from Republican Ninth District Congressional challenger Mike Sodrel says Sarah Palin is coming to Jeffersonville on Wednesday:

Governor Sarah Palin will be in Jeffersonville this Wednesday evening, October 29 for a rally.

We need 250 volunteers to help with the event. Most likely volunteers will need to be at the venue all day.

The first 250 people to respond by email to sodrel@mikesodrel.com will get a free McCain/Palin/Sodrel T-shirt.

The volunteer spots will fill up quickly so respond ASAP.

More details to follow.

Indiana’s a battleground state, and the best we can rate is a few visits from the running mate? John McCain hasn’t been here since July. What the heck are they thinking?

Republican elected officials and conservative columnists have been throwing John McCain under the bus for the past few weeks. Now comes the in-fighting.

Even as John McCain and Sarah Palin scramble to close the gap in the final days of the 2008 election, stirrings of a Palin insurgency are complicating the campaign’s already-tense internal dynamics.

Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain’s camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain’s decline.

“She’s lost confidence in most of the people on the plane,” said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to “go rogue” in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.

“I think she’d like to go more rogue,” he said.

Palin is the epitome of ego wrapped up in designer suits and cutesy phrases. She wants — desperately, obviously wants — to stay on the national stage.

John McCain is almost certainly going to lose this election, which means he has nothing to lose right now. He should let her “go rogue.” Take her handlers away, let her do a Sunday show and go all unscripted on America.

And then, as her poll numbers continue to fall, his advisers should quietly start saying that he made a huge mistake picking someone so untested and unqualified as his running mate. Let her sink by letting her run wild.

Then start rebuilding the party from its fiscal conservative roots. Leave mavericky folksiness at the door. Get back to basics. Start recruiting candidates who don’t just appeal to the right-wing base. McCain could have been that candidate had he thrown Dubya under the bus as soon as he clinched the nomination — and picked a veep candidate with a CV and the intellect to back up an adorable personal story.

But that’s all hindsight. History starts now.

It’s October, and while this isn’t much of a surprise, I’m going to say it’s the final piece of the 20-month puzzle that, now nearly solved, depicts Barack Obama heading to the White House:

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced Sunday that he will be voting for Sen. Barack Obama, citing the Democrat’s “ability to inspire” and the “inclusive nature of his campaign.”

“He has both style and substance. I think he is a transformational figure,” Powell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Obama displayed a steadiness. Showed intellectual vigor. He has a definitive way of doing business that will do us well,” Powell said.

Powell, a retired U.S. general and a Republican, was once seen as a possible presidential candidate himself.

Powell said he questioned Sen. John McCain’s judgment in picking Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate because he doesn’t think she is ready to be president.

He also said he was disappointed with some of McCain’s campaign tactics, such as bringing up Obama’s ties to former 1960s radical Bill Ayers.

Powell served as secretary of state under President Bush from 2001 to 2005.

You can almost hear soft thud-thud-thudding of John McCain’s head hitting the wall at one of his 29 homes.

Someone will have to explain to Sarah Palin what just happened.