The Empress' New Clothes

The news hit last night that the RNC has spent $150 thousand dollars (or $149,446.96, too be specific) on Sarah Palin’s hair, makeup and wardrobe during the campaign so far. That’s a pretty amazing amount of money. Palin’s been on the campaign trail for fifty-two days now. That’s $2,873.98 a day.

For the most part, I find these little gotcha games annoying and a distraction. It doesn’t matter to me one whit that McCain wears $500 shoes or that John Edwards has a $400 haircut. If I had the kind of money that those guys have, I probably wouldn’t spend it on stuff like that, but I certainly wouldn’t want the media poking around my stereo. This, however, is a whole new level of absurdity. Is it even possible to wear $3000 worth of brand new clothes a day? Does she burn it all at the end of the day? Is she incapable of wearing the same dress twice?

The economy is in bad shape right now, and the government is resorting to some pretty extreme measures to try and prevent the crisis from turning into a catastrophe. McCain is rightly viewed as being all over the place in regards to the economy. It doesn’t help McCain’s position that the economy is normally a Democratic stronghold. But after the houses flap from earlier this year, this is exactly the kind of absurd, out-of-touch publicity that the Republicans needed to avoid. And with them withdrawing in Michigan, Colorado and North Carolina, wasn’t there anything more useful they could have spent this money one – I dunno, GOTV operations or television ads? Is giving Rich Lowry a boner really worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars?

But on the bright side, with all of McCain’s houses, they’ll probably have enough closets to hang all those clothes.