Did McCain KNOW the RNC Bought Palin the Shopping Spree?
WT has been chronicling Sarah’s extreme makeover, including this picture (AP/Carolyn Kaster) she captions, "YOU told me I could keep the clothing!" I think she’s right–there’s a load of tension there.
And I think several things suggest the breaking news of Sarah’s spree is the precipitating factor in recent chilliness between McCain and his Caribou Barbie. There’s the terse way McCain responds to questions about it.
Presidential candidate John McCain isn’t happy about having to explain why the Republican Party has had to buy running mate Sarah Palin $150,000 in clothes, hair styling and accessories.
McCain was asked several questions on Thursday about the shopping spree — and he answered each one more or less the same way: Palin needed clothes and they’ll be donated to charity.
There’s the "tenseness" that Chuck Todd notes. Todd’s wrong to suggest McCain and Palin weren’t comfortable with each other, yet–after all there was plenty of chemistry about four weeks ago (at least on the part of McCain; Palin’s always been a little uncomfortable when he leered at her), and they traveled together and hung out in Sedona for a good chunk of that period of time. So I think Todd’s other suggestion–that McCain is blaming Palin for their failing campaign–makes more sense. And given the timing, the blame seems focused on the latest abusurdity of the $150,000 shopping spree.
Add in the well-reported history of McCain–the guy formerly known as a maverick reformer–attacking precisely this kind of campaign expenditure.
MCCAIN: Madam President, the amendment before the Senate is a very simple one. It restricts the use of campaign funds for inherently personal purposes. The amendment would restrict individuals from using campaign funds for such things as home mortgage payments, clothing purchases … and vacations or other trips that are noncampaign in nature. […]
The use of campaign funds for items which most Americans would consider to be strictly personal reasons, in my view, erodes public confidence and erodes it significantly. [emphasis TP’s]
Not that ignorance would exonerate McCain one bit–he still owns resposibility for allowing his campaign to do something that, in his own view, "erodes public confidence." But this signals the degree to which even McCain (who after all has better than average self-delusion skills) has to recognize that his campaign refutes everything the myth of the maverick reformer was supposed to be about.
Mostly, though, I’m still wondering about Cindy’s role in all this. I imagine this exchange, occuring back in September:
Cindy: So we’ve got Levi coming down for a public show when you arrive in St. Paul, and I’ve taken Sarah out for a few items to spiff her up a bit, and I’ve got Jeff arranging to take care of Todd and the rest of the family.
John: That’s nice dear … [treating this latest chat about shopping as he treats all of Cindy’s reports about her own shopping]
With Cindy then approving the expenditure for the spree.
That’s all my imagination, of course, but this is actually the second time the McCain campaign’s been caught spending big sums at Barneys. And we know Cindy has a history of charging up $500,000 in a month without blinking an eye. So maybe this is all just a misunderstanding, on Cindy’s part, because she can’t fathom that politicians who don’t already have a fortune have no ethical way to spend $4000 a day on clothes.
can’t wait to see their Halloween outfits
How sure are you that you haven’t already?
Cindy’s role in all this…
glad to see this question in print
and I’ve also been wondering if Cindy had a role in Palin’s selection???
I wouldn’t be surprised for Cindy to quietly pay for the clothing expenses so Sarah can hang onto the goods. It’s hard to see Sarah letting go…
But that woudl still violate all sorts of ethical rules. If Palin were a private citizen, she could take it as a gift, up to limits on gifts.
But she’s a public official. If Ted Stevens can go to jail for $200,000 of a new house (and don’t forget the massage chair), than Palin might go to jail for a new wardrobe.
Yeah, but can she keep them if she is removed from office because she violated the privacy of Wooten’s personnel file? (Cindy would have to increase the gift by enough to pay the taxes on it, though, wouldn’t she?)
IIRC, Cindy said at the beginning of the campaign that she would not be paying for any campaign expenses from her personal fortune. Not sure what that means….
Thanks ew.
digg
“Jeff Larson” is an interesting google ride
supporting thought that McCain might not have known about shopping trip…
dated Aug 15
A handful of prominent political names dot the list, most notably Jeff Larson. The Hudson, Wisconsin resident has given $30,800 to GOP candidates since the beginning of 2007, making him the 65th most generous political patron in the state. One interesting omission: no money for John McCain.
article also mentions Larson ties to Norm Coleman
In addition to his DCI/FLS/Roosevelt Group/Norm Coleman work, “Jeff Larson” was (is) the CEO for the 2008 Minneapolis-St. Paul RNC Convention Host Committee.
Convention Host Committees are strange animals. The FEC authorizes them to form as 501(c)(3) nonprofits. And they can take unlimited corporate contributions.
The Convention has its FEC report up on the website: http://www.msp2008.com/
But, nonprofit, unlimited contributions, Larson…. Just sayin…
EW, I really appreciate you staying on this. I think the more sunlight this gets now, the easier it is to elect a Democratic governor of Alaska. It also reinforces all the worst parts of the borrow and spend GOP in a way that is accessible to all Americans.
If folks including Chuck Todd think this tension between Palin and McCain is new then they have not been watching closely enough. This tension was there from the beginning.
I thought the real revelation of tension was in the interview when they were refuting the Powell endorsement with the previous Secretaries of State who’ve endorsed McCain.
Palin excuses herself to interrupt and says “well y’know [morethan*] four previous Secretaries of State have endorsed John McCain” and goes into a riff of talking points.
McCain looks a little irritated at being interrupted and then picks up the beat when Palin winds up. He starts naming and counting them. Then he says “Four”.
Palin snaps, turning her head halfway at McCain and not looking at the interviewer: “FOUR”.
This is reminiscent of more family spats than I can count that I’ve seen. Inter-spousal tension over some issue that’s being papered over for public consumption. A conversational misunderstanding in an environment where both spouses are competing for attention from a third party. One spouse takes the chance to knock the other back into place. The other snaps back.
Casa Palin has to be one seriously dysfunctional place. No wonder Todd’s always out racing snowmobiles – I’d do something, anything, to get out of an environment that can get that toxic.
No wonder her kids are all f’d up.
–
* it seems the sound or Palin’s voice briefly drops out at that instant, the way it often does for anyone in normal conversation, such that people get misunderstandings. She might have moved (inadvertently) such that her mike didn’t pick it up.
LOL. I can’t always watch this stuff, so thanks for the play-by-play.
F that. You don’t know her kids and neither do I, and either way, F talking about that.
Her daughter got pregnant? Is it F’d up for 17 year old girls to have sex? Maybe.. it sure wasn’t when I was a 17 year old boy.
Get off the kids.
Two fists with square shoulders. Two pointing fingers.
Oh, the body language.
The dynamics at play here are mindboggling. They would all be personal, but for McCain asking to be made national chief executive, with his finger on the buttons of our judiciary, legislature, military, economy and partially-nationalized police forces. Except for that, this would be just another spat among the wealthy over too many poker games, poke-her games, shopping sprees, liquor and pills.
Among the possibilities here, McCain is off-loading on McSarah his anger at her and his wife, the latter being harder to show because she pays the bills, and partly because she has the money to do that when St. John hasn’t.
He’s angry at McSarah for being such a grasping ditz who would rather sell ACLU-event tickets to Cheney than go for a roll in the hay with St. John. St. John relates well only to women who find him, or pretend that he is sexually alluring, available and willing, and only for as long as they do.
He’s angry at his team for preferring McSarah over Holy Joe, and foisting her on him.
All of which substitutes for expressing the anger he must feel at himself for having chosen that team, for having chosen to accept their recommendation of Palin, for having chosen to accept their talking points, their tactics-over-the-strategy-we-don’t-have. For being in soooo over his head, the way he’s been his entire life. Poor St. John, going out the way he came in. In a few weeks, he’ll be all Cindy’s problem, and she has the money and the pre-nup to keep him in the dog house. Maybe that’s what he’s most afraid of.
But make a man defined by so much anger, aggression, projection and denial, a man consumed with division, opportunism and his own mortality — the opposites of Obama’s defining attributes — president? The monks in Saigon who poured gasoline over themselves before lighting their candle would seem be peaceful by comparison.
The good news is that if, by hook or crook, McCain wins, he will smack the vice presidency down to size.
The bad news is that he’s so mercurial, so distractable, so prone to anger and aggression, so unable to keep up with the information overload, the constant prioritizing and re-prioritizing, and the decision-making required of the job, that despite his best intentions, he would leave plenty of room in the sandbox for Sarah to build her own little castles.
I’m wondering if McCain’s latest c*nt freudian slip was because his animosity towards her is invading everything.
What ever happened to the McNasty “….we’re soul mates”, in re Pallin, video? I’d be loopin’ that thing 24/7 somewhere interspersed with cuts to the clothes, “real” American comments, McPallin winks and the like,…..if I had the venue and skills. It still gags me to watch it.
Oh,there it is-
http://crooksandliars.com/2008…..-soulmate/
Listening to this story about McCain at Democracy Now
Report: McCain Suppressed Info on Fellow Vietnam POWs Left Behind
We speak to Pulitzer-winning journalist Sydney Schanberg about how the “war hero” candidate Sen. John McCain buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam. Writing for The Nation magazine, Schanberg reveals that McCain “worked very hard to hide from the public stunning information about American prisoners in Vietnam who, unlike him, didn’t return home.”
http://www.democracynow.org/20….._on_fellow
Leen, just got back from reading,
my knees are weak
I’m going to guess that if the Palins’ Interviews tomorrow with Petumenos reveal an Indictable Offense, as part of the Alaska Personnel Board Investigation, then there is No Way that that ‘finding’ will be kept from the Public before the Election – you just can’t hide a Candidate getting Charged with Abuse of Power.
If that happens – and it’s a Real Possibility if Todd got the Grimes Document from Wooten’s Personnel File – then McCain has No One to blame for his Poor Judgment in picking her to be his running mate, except himself.
Her indictment would be his indictment, too.
For a look at Sarah’s sophisticated view on Power, check-out her reasoning at 1:10+ of this segment of the Couric Interview.
So, in Sarah’s World, Todd pre-emptively attacking ‘the bad guys’ – like Wooten – shouldn’t be ’second guessed,’ because she ‘knows’ Todd, her Ally, is ‘a good guy.’
Her schoolroom dramas on a national platform.
I thought she was being touted as a WalMart mom! Only thing she seems to purchase there is diapers…or then again,was that Depends she was picking up for …well,you get the idea.
I’ve got a different take on this.
Just think how many robocalls the RNC can’t make for every $10,000 dress, for every $1,000 donkey scarf….
The shopping trip was a rumor around Mpls-St. Paul during the convention, but of the nature of an unsourced rumor — someone knew someone who worked at Neiman-Marcus, and she said… Apparently there was a midnight shopping event while they were holed up in the Minneapolis Hotel studying Civics, and they opened the store for her, getting her measurements and sizes, finding a stand in with the same, who could try various clothes as trials, and then send them over to the hotel. The DFL Rumor vine had the kids getting serviced across the street at Macy’s. (Formerly Dayton’s, formerly Marshall Field’s.) During the convention the Mpls Stores had extra luxury inventory, as most of the delegates stayed in Mpls.
Over the years I’ve done much shopping at an out of the way hole in the wall (Opus) that takes shop-worn inventory from Bloomingdales, and Neiman Marcus, and sells it at 80-90% discount. If you are clever enough to sew up a split seam, or search for a missing button, you can really do yourself up quite nicely on a middle class budget. Of course when you go shopping, you never know exactly what you will bring home — hit and miss, and hope what you think matches up, actually does. I think they should have taken Sarah to Opus. Their problem was, essentially, that Sarah was going to stand next to Cindy — and they had to level the difference.
Amazing that they spent all that money on Palin, and yet in almost every video from campaign stops, you see McCain wearing seersucker type of cheesy looking geezer shirts, open collar, under a common blue blazer. Literally looks like they threw a jacket on grandpa from the nursing home.
To the head of the class…you are right on with your evaluation!!!!
So true…and so hilarious.
Well, he looked Presidential enough when he made his big speech in St. Paul, but he already has Senate togs, and I would assume he has a closet full of dark blue suits and appropriate shirts and ties. We know he has 500 dollar shoes — and I would assume he has a goodly stock of well cut suits, if not bespoken ones.
Women in the Senate have many more choices. Suits, Dresses, PantSuits, some mix of them. Of all the women Senators, I think Diane Finestein has best solved the problem of how to meet standards, but look comfortable and herself. She tends toward plain tailored solid color dresses, topped with interesting jackets and sometimes smocks — all of which have big pockets solving the problem of having “stuff” but not taking a purse on to the floor, which is apparently a no-no. I mentioned this to Amy Klobuchar late last spring — I thought she looked too uptight in her suits left over from her court appearances as DA. I really think a woman Senator needs a good dressmaker, who can take interesting fabric and run up one of a kind outfits, altering a few basic patterns so as to achieve variety, and a striking overall appearance. Gets around the problem of wearing the same “off the rack” outfit as someone else, and is probably a good deal less expensive than shopping at the high end stores.