Off with her clothes.

The big deal (if it is a big deal) about Sister Sarah’s clothing scandal is how it looks to the little people from her “real America” who are already getting whacked by the pending doom that is our economy. I am not worried that a campaign would spend their donors' hard earned on making the candidate as appealing as possible. Or that they spend their money recklessly. Remember when Hillary had a $95,000 pizza bill back in Iowa? This is just the way they do things. But how does it get out? You don’t hear about overspending and mismanagement with the other side.

I purloined this from the HuffPo’s Sam Stein:
“Democrats (in this scenario) are not prone to forgiveness. After all, it was during this same campaign cycle that Republicans belittled the $400 haircut that former Sen. John Edwards had paid for with his own campaign money (the funds were later reimbursed). And yet, the comparison to that once-dominant news story is hardly close: if Edwards had gotten one of his legendary haircuts every singe week, it would still take him 7.2 years to spend what Palin has spent. Palin has received the equivalent of $2,500 in clothes per day from places such as Saks Fifth Avenue (where RNC expenditures totaled nearly $50,000) and Neiman Marcus (where the governor had a $75,000 spree)."

Palin received more valuable clothes in one month than the average American household spends on clothes in 80 years. A Democrat put it in even blunter terms: "Her clothes were the cost of health care for 15 or so people.” However, Stein leaves out that Edwards paid out $114,000 of campaign money for four two and a half minute videos of himself to someone he was boinking at the time.

The McPalin team was quick to point out that the clothes will be given to charity after November 5th. But I think I have a better idea. She should eBay the clothes after she loses. Just the silky stuff could pay back the $150 K and I’m sure a lot guys would like to get hold of one of those red leather Michael Jackson jackets that has become her sartorial signature. Of course that means that Baby Trig will have to give up his designer Dr. Dentons and the First Dude will have to trade in his suits and go back to oil skins and snowmobile outfits.

The tenor of the campaign loves this kind of mud to throw and, even if it is not a big deal, it becomes a red flag for other shenanigans. Because, there’s also too, the business of flying her kids on commercial airlines with her to more than a dozen events to the tune of $22 K at taxpayer expense. Surely the Gov. is entitled to fly first class. This includes a $700 a night flop at the Essex House on Central Park for her and Bristol who was not even invited to the event. You have to say, she’s a good mom. But a pricey Governor. She naturally wants to be with her kids so instead of working out of the capitol in Juneau where the law makers and department heads are, she stays at home. This part doesn’t seem right. She charges the state a per diem for each night spent in her own house. Three hundred and twelve of them! The legality of this move is now under review, by the GOVERNOR’S OFFICE. YGBSHM!

The likeable and smart Lawrence O’Donnel, an MSNBC mouth, who knows a thing or two about campaigns, is certain that all the hoopla “doesn’t matter.” He’s probably right. Even SNL only gave it one line this week. He told his fellow hecklers, “She doesn’t pick out the clothes.” The campaign (in its omniscience) picks out her clothing for the “look” they want to see, just as they put the words in her mouth that they want to us to hear. They seem to have gotten the wardrobe better.

In retrospect, Schmidt and company are going to wish they had let her speak more of her own words. The few times I’ve seen her speak on her own she was a different sounding, much more likable person. I was impressed with her interview when she said she would run things differently [from the campaign] in terms of how she presents herself and that she did not like the current content of the robo calls. It isn’t easy to for someone to have to change their personality on a dime to suit someone else’s idea of what they want you to sound like. She got where she is by Sarah being Sarah. The girl is all personality with an 80 percent favorable rating in her current job. She stands out like a tomato-red leather jacket. And then the campaign says, yeah but let’s tweak it. Let’s have a committee decide what should come out of her mouth. Of course that didn’t work so hot with Katie. Forced to read talking points off her lap she looked foolish. You might say it backfired. But they keep pushing her out there to shout “socialist” and “elite” to people who don’t even know what the words mean.

One other thought. Michelle O went on a TV program called The View in a $148 dress from the GAP and that’s what all the chatterers talked about for a whole news cycle.