Thanks Mr. Hundt. Well said.

They are actually dressing and accessorizing their Caribou Barbie, to the tune of $150,000 no less! Nothing says "Hockey mom" or "Main Street" like Saks and Neiman Marcus, after all.

This story sums up their fraud of a campaign better than anything you can possibly imagine.

For perspective, take a look at our Mr. Celebrity,

http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/obama-shoes-400.jpg

The candidate is like an actress in a film, she wears a costume. The producers pay for the props and the costumes. After shooting the makeup is washed off and the clothes are hung up and the wardrobe lady takes them to the cleaners.

The real ethics question is whether she gets to keep the clothes after the election.

Agreed: it's not the clothes, it's the hypocrisy. With her high unfavorability ratings, Sarah Palin gives new meaning to the term "drag queen."

LOL. There is absolutely nothing Palin could do that would garner approval from the left. If the clothes are too expensive, she's detached from her roots. If she looked shabby like Hillary, she'd be too much of a hick to run the country. Because the prejudice against her is so profound, this will only serve to demonstrate how unhinged her critics are. That would be you folks.

Meanwhile, she sails on through bluff and bluster, being tempered like fine steel, preparing for the next race. I'm still voting for Obama, but if Palin runs for national office again, all bets are off. Meanwhile, keep up the good work. Heh.

Really, I don't think this is much of an issue, although her getting a campaign wardrobe may shock some, I doubt if many of the shocked were planning to vote for Sarah Palin in the first place.

My question would be: don't you really believe that Obama is that far ahead in the polls? Because if you did, you wouldn't have much time for this kind of trivia.

I know you folks who don't live in real America have higher property values and pay more for things like food and clothing. But for some perspective, out here in one of the pro-America parts of America, with $150,000 I could pay off my mortgage and my car loan and still have $75,000 left. With that $75,000, I could pay off the rest of my student loan. After that, I'd have $65,000 left. With no loans left, I could make that stretch for four or five years. No kidding.

People have different values and if you have the money to spend, what you do with it is up to you (Cindy McCain). But don't spend somebody else's money to uber-pad your own wardrobe and don't pretend to share my values if you drop in six weeks twice as much money as I spent on my house.

Where is Sen Biden in this discussion instead of being the usual bone-head on the campaign trail. Thought Sen Biden was the V.P. nominee/attack dog for Obama...instead spending 150k on clothes, makeup,LASIK eye surgery (to get rid of those corny glasses), how about spending that on some better education for Gov Palin....she was speaking to a group of 3rd graders, with a child in the crowd asking again what is the role of a V.P. Gov Palin answered (paraphrasing here...), that the V.P. oversees (controls) the Senate and establishes Senatorial policies.

It isn't the $150,000 wardrobe so much as the fact that the wardrobe is topped by a $0.10 head.

I can't help but think, Clinton dressed very nicely, for her personal appearances.
It seems a little phoney, to spend all this money,
when alot of Americans are in real financial trouble. Seems like a disconect.

Oh, one more thing. If the Palin's net worth is somewhere in the 2 million dollar range, I would bet that their yearly combined earned income doesn't exceed 150,000.
Who would spend a years income on clothes?
With the way things are now, clothes and accessories, are not to high on our household list of needs.

A couple of people have thrown out how this is hypocritcial because John Edwards, Gore, and Hillary were all criticized for their expenditures, too, and dems still supported them. Uh, maybe. But they all LOST, so it didn't really work out well for them.

This is hypocrisy on the reps part, pure and simple, and y'all know it. Not only does it completely contrast with her image as a working-class hockey mom, but once again, it shows horrible judgment on the campaign's part. Spend $150,000 on clothes when your campaign is being outspent what, 3 to 1, or whatever they've been whining about lately? Fail to jump ahead of a story that they knew was going to break when they're already behind in the polls and her unfavorable ratings are already skyrocketing? The clothes are going to be donated to "charity". That's great...which one? Couldn't have figured that out before this broke? How great would it have been if she'd told a reporter that they were going to auction off her clothes (and there would be a ton of people who would pony up to buy - I personally dig the suit she wore on SNL, and those boots)to benefit a Down Syndrome org,for instance. She gets on stage talking about understanding real americans when she's sporting a wardrobe that could pay for any real american's mortgage. And no one figured out that this might be a problem? This campaign is being badly mishandled, and the Republicans SHOULD be pissed about it. I certainly was when it happened with the Dems in 2000 and 2004.

This, from Politico: "Stylists: Palin's Fashion Buys Worth It", presently identified as one of 7 news headlines on my yahoo browser homepage.

This paragraph struck me as interesting, and perhaps unintentionally revealing:

"Betsy Fisher, the owner of the eponymous clothing store in Dupont Circle, says Palin and her people managed to straddle the line. 'She does not look like she is wearing particularly expensive clothes,' Fisher said. 'She looks like you could be her, too.'"

@American Dreamer;

So, in the words of Steven Tyler, "You'd be amazed at how much money it takes to look this cheap". That's great, but it still...took a lot of money. She doesn't look like she spent 150k on her clothes,which makes me think that she really didn't have to. I saw those boots at Macys this weekend, I have the skirt and white shirt she wore yesterday in my closet, from Banana Republic. The suit she wears in the NBC interview. I have what looks like the exact same thing, again from Banana Republic, and not a damn one of those things, other than the boots ($230) was more than a $100, give or take a twenty. And it just occurred to me that I spend entirely too much time checking out Sarah Palin's wardrobe...at any rate, I bet you I could spend a couple of hours and re-create everything I've seen her wear in the past two months, and the most expensive store I'd go to would be Macys. The RNC wuz robbed.

Fiscal conservatism my ass. These are the people we're going to trust to turn the economy around? You betcha!

It occurs to me that some interns somewhere -- the ones who actually did the shopping, and it was a crew because that much clothing is heavy! -- have a really great story to tell about it all. And you know one of them will break silence on November 5, broker it to an appearance on Letterman and go into private practice with a grand cocktail party circuit tale all ready.

This would make a great movie screenplay. Professional woman is plucked from relative obscurity and turned into a lady. It might star Julia Roberts in the lead role. Maybe Richard Gere could be the RNC John and Jason Alexander the slimy RNC lawyer, Laura San Giaccomo could play the Wasilla pro who was left behind... Love, Betrayal, Hair, Legs, Clothing and unwanted pregnancies.

Reed,

Your missing an important part of the story that seriously undermine's your petty attack on Governor Pallin; namely, she is going to give her wardrobe to charity as soon as the campaign is over.

You and your liberal legions would deny the single mother of two, who works all day on an essembly line, and then waits tables well into the early hours of the morning, the chance to sport 3 inch heeled Manolo Blahniks! It seems vain, but if she has to schlepp cheap beer in a dark smoke-filled hole, she should, at the minimum, feel fabulous.

Or the retired school teacher who's been bumped out of her assisted living facility for lack of insurance, and now has to live on the charity of local churches and shelters, often spending the night on the filthy floors of the local bus station: Doesn't she deserve an Albert Nipon
Diamond-Textured Jacket & Dress Set? Or even a lightly used Jemma Kid Bio-Mineral Perfecting Powder compaq?

You act like you care about the poor, but do you? Do you Armani-style?

When McCain defends the expense by saying "SHE needed clothes," why isn't the follow-up "And the rest of the Palin family needed $10,000 in clothes? Piper needed a Louis Vitton handbag?"

As low as he has proven himself to be in this election, I can't picture John McCain trying to sneak a dress for Cindy through the campaign budget. Or Obama trying to attire either of his children that way. And we all know that if Joe Biden bought a convention dress for his wife with campaign funds it would have hit the front page way quicker than this story did.