...My Favorite Consignment Shop in Anchorage

Does anyone believe this malarkey? The RNC spent $150,000 on a wardrobe for Sarah Palin and her family, I suppose to upgrade their look for the campaign, and politically, it backfired, embarrassing Governor "I'm Just an Average American Like You" Palin. Yesterday on the campaign trail, she sought to tamp down the flap about the wardrobe, asserting that the clothes are not her property, that it's all just for stagecraft to make things look good, and that she's "back to wearing my own clothes from my favorite consignment shop in Anchorage, Alaska."

Give me a break! She's the governor of a state! She's not wearing consignment shop clothes! Seriously, anyone who falls for that should have their head examined. Governor Palin and her husband, according to federal disclosures reported by the Associated Press, are worth about 1.2 million dollars, and they had an income in 2007 of $230,000 - which does not include the $17,000 worth of per diem she was paid by the state for 312 nights of staying in her own home since she was elected to office. Now, I know she has five kids, which certainly eats into a person's wardrobe budget, and I know that of the four people running for high office, Gov. Palin is the least well-off, especially when compared to the person at the top of her ticket, but I just don't buy the consignment shop story.

In the whole scheme of things, perhaps this isn't important, but I think it shows a certain amount of disingenuousness that runs counter to her image as a "maverick" - it just seems like it comes right out of the playbook of your standard-issue politician.

She also said, “The double standard here, gosh, we don’t even want to waste our time.” Does anyone have any idea what she's talking about? What's the double standard?

-EB

Updated 10:20am: Well, according to this column by Maureen Dowd, Governor Palin did, at one point, shop at a consignment store called "Out of the Closet." That said, I'm still not buying her assertion that she's currently wearing consignment shop clothes on the trail. Dowd makes an interesting point in her column - for all the cries of sexism that the Republicans have been throwing at the media and critics of Gov. Palin, it's really the McCain campaign and RNC that are guilty of sexism, in how they have felt the need to gloss-up and glam-up the governor with expensive clothes and a make-up artist that was paid more than anyone on the campaign for the first two weeks of October - more than $20,000! Rather than letting Palin be Palin, as I've heard it said by conservatives, they've been playing, as Dowd puts it, "Caribou Barbie." So, honestly, if Palin is pissed off about how the campaign has handled her, and is concerned that she's been tarnished by this, and in some way diminished by it, she's got every right to be. But it still doesn't make her qualified to be second-in-line for the presidency.