Palin’s Clothes Budget

I want to chime in about the Republican campaign’s purchase of a very expensive wardrobe for Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. After all, everyone else is talking about it, so why shouldn’t I?

Politico.com reported that the RNC spent almost $150,000 to make Palin look good on camera, including over $75,000 at Neiman Marcus, almost $48,000 for more clothes purchased in St. Louis, and almost $5,000 for makeup and hair styles.

There’s a temporary uproar on the 24-hour news channels about all that money being spent on high fashion for a “hockey mom.” The pundits are suggesting that it’s hypocritical for someone to call themselves a friend of Walmart shoppers to wear expensive clothes, but these newscasters wouldn’t be caught dead on camera in the kind of outfits you can find at Walmart. And it’s also somewhat ridiculous to suggest that you can’t empathise with the working class while wearing a nice suit.

I think the pundits are simply missing the point. The problem isn’t the clothes, per se. It’s about the money.

I live in a house that cost $75,000 two years ago. In less than two months the RNC managed to spend twice as much money as my house cost on clothes for a vice presidential candidate. Remember, these are the folks who support McCain - and he’s the guy who claims to be so worked up over unnecessary government spending. McCain objects to federal dollars going towards environmental research projects, like the bear DNA project that would help scientists study bear populations, and the famous “overhead projector” for a Chicago planetarium that is known for getting kids excited about the stars, but he has no problem spending a big chunk of the campaign’s limited money on clothes for his running mate.

Back in 2007, McCain’s primary campaign was so close to broke that they dismissed dozens of staffers. Now, as election day is just a few days away, the McCain campaign is hollering about all the money that Obama is spending for ads. It’s not fair, they say, that Obama didn’t accept public financing.

How many more ads (or robo-calls) could the Republicans buy in the next two weeks with that $150,000 Palin is wearing on her back? McCain seems to have a problem when it comes to setting rational spending priorities. (Maybe that’s because his own personal fortune is so large that he’s never really had to stick to a budget before, and doesn’t know how it’s done.)