Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, looking suitably color-coordinated. Photo from her #1 fansite, Fox News.
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The Obama campaign needs to hammer at the Palin Family's clothesgate, which I initially blogged about here:
Certainly, most of us working class schlubs have at some point received "clothing allowances" on several gigs, but this is ridiculous.
The Republican National Committee appears to have spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.
Over at Politico, Drew Westen astutely comments:
Meanwhile, McCain sounds like he had to get Palin up to snuff in a hurry; as an Alaskan ragamuffin, she didn't possess the necessary bling to be a good Republican:
If the economy continues to tank and the stock market continues to plummet, nothing McCain or Palin can do or say will make much difference. But it would certainly be helpful to the Obama team to connect the dots for voters—that as middle class voters are struggling to pay their mortgage, Palin and her husband are spending hundreds of thousands on their wardrobes on a shopping spree at “elite” stores, courtesy of contributors big and small, and that this is just one more example of how out of touch with what the average American family is going through that McCain and Palin are. The impact of a story like this depends on the story you tell about it, and if it’s just “Palin bought nice clothes,” it will have no effect. If the story is that this is yet another index that they don’t “get it,” it would have a very different meaning to the average voter, since that’s already a concern they have about the GOP ticket.
And so, I guess the answer to the question posed as the title of my first post about clothesgate is now apparent: Does she get to keep the clothes? No.
John McCain defended the Republican National Committee’s decision Thursday to spend more than $150,000 dollars on clothing and accessories for running mate Sarah Palin.
“She needed clothes at the time,” McCain told a group of Florida reporters.
The Arizona Republican said that the clothing will be donated to charity and that there was nothing unusual about spending the committee’s money on Palin’s look.
“They'll be donated at end of this campaign. They'll be donated to charity,” McCain said.
“It works by her getting some clothes when she was made the nominee of the party and it will be donated back to charity,” he added. “It works that the clothes will be donated to charity. Nothing surprises me.”
According to financial disclosure forms, the RNC shelled out thousands of dollars in the days following the announcement that Palin would be McCain’s running mate.
Since the news broke Tuesday, the RNC has taken heat for choosing to spend so much to clothe Palin during such a daunting year for GOP candidates across the country and in the midst of an economic meltdown.
While McCain defended the decision Thursday, he does not have Republican donors pay the tab for his shopping.
“I pay for my suits,” McCain said in an interview with WSLS, a Roanoke, Va. television station.
“I pay for all of my own clothing.”
I'll bet she's pissed to find that out now.
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