Palin's Wardrobe Saga Exposes McCain's Flaws: Margaret Carlson - The Diigo Meta page

• 23 Oct 08
  

  Clay Burell

  Palin's $150,000 campaign wardrobe - paid for by campaign money, thus taxpayer-funded - another example of REDISTRIBUTING THE WEALTH and REPUBLICAN SOCIALISM?
  
  Jeez, let's put this campaign out of its misery. It's an embarrassment in the eyes of the world.

  elections08 mcain palin

  • At the very moment Palin was
    celebrating herself as ``your average hockey mom'' in her
    convention speech, she was wearing a $2,500 silk jacket by
    Valentino.

  • Palin parading around like a Project Runway extra will take
    far less heat even though the bill she sent the committee makes
    Paris Hilton look like a Target shopper. With her $1.2 million in
    assets and six-figure salary, Palin could have footed the bill
    for whatever extreme makeover she felt was in order.

    
    

    It's not a victimless crime. That $150,000 comes from funds
    that a respected incumbent like New Hampshire Republican Senator
    John Sununu -- struggling not to be dragged down by the McCain-
    Palin ticket -- desperately needs.

    
    

    Earlier it came out that Palin had charged the government
    for $17,000 in per-diem payments for 300 days she spent in her
    own house. Now we find she charged the state for trips that
    resemble vacations if not junkets.

  • 2 more annotations...

  • • A stunning 55 percent now think her unqualified to be
      president. Even as more people find her unsuited to the job,
      she's enlarging it. She says that as vice president her duties
      would include being ``in charge of the U.S. Senate.'' The RNC
      should have spent its money for a tutorial on the Constitution.

      
      

      In choosing Palin, McCain ignored the old rule to pander to
      your base in the primary and break their hearts in the general
      election. Palin was a gift to the already committed. A hunter-
      gatherer from the last frontier with a large family and knockout
      good looks, she even turned an out-of-wedlock pregnancy that
      could have put off evangelicals as an example of lax childrearing
      or Hollywood ethics into a story of teenagers in love doing the
      right thing.

    • What she does well is
      hardly enough to compensate for what she does poorly.

      
      

      In the short run, she made McCain happier than he'd been in
      months and served to remind people of his maverick side. But in
      the end his impulsive choice proved more reminiscent of the
      impetuous young McCain who hated authority, amassed demerits at
      the Naval Academy and ticked off colleagues as a grandstanding
      hothead.

      
      

      The errors we make that hurt the most are the unforced ones.
      Palin cost McCain his standing with many Republicans and lost him
      the endorsement of his friend, Colin Powell, the man he called
      his ``favorite living hero.'' On ``Meet the Press'' last Sunday,
      Powell said Palin raised doubts about McCain. ``I don't believe
      she's ready to be president of the United States, which is the
      job of the vice president.''

      
      

      For all the experience 72 years has brought McCain, it
      hasn't brought him good judgment. We didn't know that before
      Palin. We know it now.

      
      

      (Margaret Carlson, author of ``Anyone Can Grow Up: How
      George Bush and I Made It to the White House'' and former White
      House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News
      columnist.

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