You have heard all this by now:
Politico: RNC shells out $150K for Palin fashion
The Republican National Committee has 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.
According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.
The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.
It’s not an important issue, but it is a shocking story. And it led to a lot of comment. None of it good for the McCain campaign.
That’s $150,000 for two months’ worth of style. Eighteen thousand dollars a week to clothe a candidate. I would not know where to put all the clothes I could buy for $1000 per week. That’s campaign money. Is it legal? Is it unprecedented? The money should have gone to tutors. The RNC might have paid a real-life Professor Higgins with that money, someone with speed-ESL skills. Or someone who could perform a brain transplant. The RNC says it’s going to give all these clothes to charity after the campaign. Which leaves me wondering what the plan is if Sarah Palin ends up as VP. I don’t think the VP’s salary can cover Sarah’s habit.
Those last two words made me think of Shirley MacLaine in Two Mules for Sister Sara… who was possibly more qualified to be the running mate of a Maverick™. Certainly, a more talented actress. The Hockey Mom is nothing more than Caribou Barbie. That’s a lot of lipstick. I’ve heard this called an “Empress’s new clothes” moment, and it reminds me of Marie Antoinette. “Let them eat cake,” after all the talk of socialism… Can you have your reform cake and eat it, too? You betcha!
Enough jokes. McCain and Palin are shouting “socialism” and all Obama is doing is rolling back the Bush tax cut for people who made $250k or more. Their taxes will go from 36% to 39%. Everybody else will get a bigger tax break. But you don’t need to read this here; you either know it already, or refuse to believe it.
The Bush tax cut (from 39% to 36%) allowed the wealthy to keep more money, and meant the less wealthy would not get a tax cut. Obama is trying to get a tax cut to more of us, and will do so only by eliminating the Bush tax cut. Both men are spreading the wealth. One of them is spreading it in a way that helps more Americans. That doesn’t seem socialist to me. It seems outright patriotic. That makes Obama the Real American.
McCain was once on Obama’s side on this. He was opposed to the Bush tax cut as far back as 2001. But it appears that he will say anything now, to try to pull Obama down in the polls. The problem with McCain is that he no longer seems to stand for anything, and while that is mavericky in its own way, it’s not the way of the Maverick™.
If Obama is a socialist, than McCain was too, when he spoke out against the Bush tax cut. And Clinton was. So was Bush Sr., and Reagan, and Carter and Ford and Nixon. The top tax rate in this country in the 1970s was something like 70%.
McCain has been trying to make something out of Joe the Plumber, and the question he asked Barack the One. Here is the entire exchange between Joe and Barack. It’s just a simple conversation, one-on-that-one, surrounded by a crowd. Try to picture McCain or Palin handling a similar situation.
Admittedly, I did have a naughty chuckle reading this particular article on “ Spreading the Wealth” I had images of Sarah Palin with marbles in her mouth, a la Professor Higgins and in high school with foreign students, for a speed ESL skills course.
All that money on cloths, wow, it’s really sad, it makes me really wonder where have our priorities gone? Did the RNC or whomever, feel we needed to see her in a particular way more conducive to appropriate VP attire? I know this much to be true, last week before I went to work. I always make sure I see my little boy is on his school bus, and off I zoom to work. A family has moved into our neighborhood due to lost jobs and a defaulted mortgage and bad luck with health issues. They now stay with a great grandmother.
This child waits with my child for the school bus, it’s been cold of late and I always bundle up my lovely son, way too much and way too tight. As I looked at this particular child I noticed they had no coat, no gloves or warm hat. They mentioned some of their clothing items had been lost in their hasty move. My heart hit the floor; I felt a sick pain in my pit of my stomach, of such sadness and sheer despair.
Rushing into my home I remembered I had a huge bag of my daughters cloths, with a great Gap pink heavy warm coat and just enough gloves and hats for a good couple of years. We sell most of our children’s cloths to a consignment store, much to my son’s chagrin, he hates to part with “his stuff’ but heck, you want that video game, well you better contribute, tough love, or just life lessons, you can decide.
My point is not my martyrdom, but here on my road in our town in our America, people are suffering and it hurts, not because I’m a bleeding heart, but because we should care.
Did keeping up with the Joneses cost America? Wanting instant gratification and not being able to pay it back. Lack of conservatism and true family values lost on the way, I have no idea. I know this much, seeing a VP candidate pay $150,000 for cloths sends America the wrong message.
Greed and excess is not good, those days are gone and if our Government sends us the same message that it’s ok, well I guess were due for more of the same.
“Common sense is not so common” by Voltaire, one of my favorite quotes.