Here is something odd - the campaign will use Governor Palin’s warddrobe for charitable purposes after she is done with it…
I can only hope they will auction it off, as I really can’t see much use down at the Salvation Army for $1500 Nieman Marcus suits.
Certainly a candidate should be able to tap the party coffers to help pay the extra cost of having to dress for the cameras everyday, but this comes out to something like 3,000 dollars a day, everyday since she joined the ticket. I’ll grant you I know nothing about fashion, but that seems pretty steep even to dress a woman for a national campaign.
I’m not outraged (though I would be if I were a GOP donor), I just think its kind of funny.
Speaking as a liberal who has already voted for Obama, I can’t get worked up over this. $150K is a drop in the bucket compared to how much they’ve already spent in almost any one state on television air time. If Airman’s $1B figure is correct, this is 1/10 of 1% of their campaign funds.
Undergarments? Why would she need different undergarments for the campaign trail? It’s not like anybody is going to see them – yeah, the campaign has been exploiting her sex appeal, but not as crassly as that. 
I hope their policy tutoring and speech coaching was on a “results guaranteed or your money back” basis.
I don’t know if the RNC lists their small donors, but it sure would be fun to take a sample of people who’d sent in contributions of under $50 to the RNC this year, and poll them for their reactions.
Neither do I – I mean, how hard can it be to decide between “she’s a hockey mom” and “she’s a starlet” and then to stick with the decision?
Not so fast. The AP is reporting an RNC source as saying the wardrobe was to have been donated to charity after the election. Yeah, right. :rolleyes:
As an Obama supporter, I just want to take this opportunity to again thank John McCain for so impulsively, and with so little vetting, selecting Gov. Palin as his running mate.
The heavy Kool-Aid drinkers might cling to that rationalization. Judging from the flood of e-mail that came into today’s “Morning Joe” when Mika tried to defend the shopping spree, Main Street generally ain’t buying it.
Damn it. Now I want $150K and my own caribou barbie. Dress up on that scale sounds like a blast.
Er… wouldn’t she need the new wardrobe to attend state funerals and run the Senate and do all that other Vice Presidenty stuff?
Surely this “RNC source” isn’t one of those defeatist surrender monkeys who doesn’t really believe that McCain and Palin are going to win?
Its steep, but it isn’t out of line. Seriously, we are talking about suits from Nieman’s running $1,000 or more. $500 pairs of shoes. Someone on staff to do her hair and makeup all the time so she doesn’t show up in orange lipstick. Jewelry. Good foundation garments to show off her figure (my bra costs $100!). Everything tailored. Different outfits for different parts of the day. Evening clothes.
Plus the children - we are dressing those kids as well - in Needless Markup’s adorable little $300 children’s outfits.
(And yes, she needs different undergarments - Sarah Palin wasn’t a bad dresser, but her clothes didn’t fit her - I’d be shocked if she’d ever been properly fitted for a bra prior to getting tagged for VP. Having your boobs and ass in the correct place via good foundation garments is part of the look - can’t have a VP candidate running around in an ill fitting bra and VPLs).
I don’t particularly care about her wardrobe or how much the Republicans spent on it. I agree that it makes sense to invest in her image, when image is a huge part of winning elections.
I do care that the Republicans m.o. is to pretend to be part of and representative of the middle class, working hard at clearing brush on their ranch while simultaneously working towards nothing but the benefit of the very wealthy. At the same time, they tirelessly work to portray whoever they are running against as effete, hyperliberal, latte drinking… not at all in touch with the concerns of everyday people (see, for example, the $400 haircut business).
This particular matter helps to expose them for the hypocrites that they are. Sarah Palin’s candidacy in particular is a sham and a facade, correctly called by Peggy Noonan in a moment of off-mike candor as bullshit. So, given that it serves a just purpose, I’m perfectly happy to wring every bit of value out of it.
If it somehow misrepresented the Republicans, I would not want to see much made of it. It doesn’t, and I’ll throw whatever such legitimate anvils I can at the drowning fucks.
Heck, you can burn though $3000 a day pretty easily dressing a man, let alone a woman.
Palin no doubt owns a number of suits for various occasions, which surely cost at least a few thousand each (I would guess around $5000 each, before tailoring). She doubtless owns at least a few gowns for formal events, which would be much more expensive. She’ll need shoes for every outfit, which, if she’s buying high-end labels, will run her at least $400 a pair (and likely more).
And that’s before you factor in joo-lery, other accessories and clothing items (bags, blouses, etc.), makeup, skin and hair products, manicures and pedicures, and stylists, shoppers, makeup artists, and hairdressers.
You think the average blue collar worker who is worried about losing his home and job is going to shrug off the relavation that someone professing to be one of them is spending the equivalent of three times their annual salary or the price of a median home, in couple of months on clothes? Good luck with that.
I think I’ve seen her in this jacket (Nordstrom, not Neiman’s - these places don’t put a lot of their really high end stuff up on the internet)
Stuffy, I work in a coop deli in a small, rural town. I’m quite familiar with how blue collar workers feel. I’m thinking specifically of the people I interact with on a daily basis when I respond to this.
We’ll see if the polls are actually affected at all in the coming days. I seriously don’t think that people who would have voted for McCain/Palin anyway are going to be too ruffled. It seems more like the type of thing for one’s political opponents to rant gleefully about than to actually change minds. One doesn’t have to drink deeply of GOP Kool-Aid to not be particularly offended by that figure. I’m an independent voter who’s voting for Obama and I still don’t care. Knowing how much that stuff costs, it only makes sense.
Republican candidates have portrayed themselves as “just folks” before while actually being wealthy and living like kings. Oddly enough, they’ve won elections while doing this exact same thing. With the economic situation as it is right now, this may hinder them even though it never did before, but I don’t have much faith in it doing so.
That seems to be because everyone with a good soapbox was too polite to mention it. That seems to have changed. And that’s why “this may hinder them even though it never did before.”
Frankly, I don’t think anyone who was going to vote for McCain/Palin is going to change their minds over anything less than the live boy/dead girl scenario (and in Palin’s case, a live girl might get her some votes). But they can’t win with the people who were going to vote for them anyway. They have to get the independents and the undecideds on their side. Now, certainly there are a lot of undecideds who don’t give a damn about how much the GOP spends on Gov. Palin’s hair. And there are certainly many who wouldn’t vote for her in her frumpy housedress (check out perennial Minnesota candidate Patty Wetterling sometime for someone who gave Michelle Bachmann the election because she couldn’t be bothered with a box of Clairol - Patty is a wonderful woman, but she is - god forbid - too much substance and not enough image). But there are also some who are going to say “$150,000 would have paid off my mortgage.”
Moderation (a $75,000 bill) would have been a wiser tactic for the GOP.
There may be some blowback here, of course, if Obama’s wardrobe or Biden’s is subsidized in any way. But I’m left cold, on principle, to pleas for sympathy for a well-paid Sentor or Governor trying to clothe himself or herself “appropriately” on a governmental salary. If you can’t set aside a few grand for clothing annually, that’s a shame. Buy a suit at Goodwill or at a yard sale, if that’s all you can afford–that’s what I did when I held a professional job and was broke.
I suspect that Palin’s been pulling this sort of thing for years, getting the taxpayers to support all sorts of illicit spending, and I only hope a scandal emerges from this tiny thread. (I also hope the Democrats’ hands are clean.) I’m not especially angry that Palin does this --she’s a clown, at this point, a negligable and corrupt small-town mayor in hopelessly over her head–but I would like to see middle-class candidates dressing like middle-class people in the future.