GOP Civil War: WardrobeGate Edition

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CNN seems to have access to McCain’s cattiest advisors. The other day, they got the "Diva" slam on Palin. And yesterday, they got the news that Palin had gone "rogue" with her statements about her rent-a-wardrdobe in Tampa.

Ensuring that news of the Republican National Committee’s sartorial spending spree will remain in the headlines for at least one more news cycle, Sarah Palin on Sunday sounded off on the $150,000 wardrobe that was purchased for her in September, denouncing the report as "ridiculous" and declaring emphatically: "Those clothes, they are not my property."

A senior adviser to John McCain told CNN’s Dana Bash that the comments about her wardrobe "were not the remarks we sent to her plane this morning." Palin did not discuss the wardrobe story at her rally in Kissimmee later in the day.

Now, aside from the latest rumor–that Mitt’s advisors are the source of the anti-Sarah leaks–I am fascinated by the lingering damage of WardrobeGate.

Former Mitt Romney presidential campaign staffers, some of whom are currently working for Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin‘s bid for the White House, have been involved in spreading anti-Palin spin to reporters, seeking to diminish her standing after the election. "Sarah Palin is a lightweight, she won’t be the first, not even the third, person people will think of when it comes to 2012," says one former Romney aide, now working for McCain-Palin. "The only serious candidate ready to challenge to lead the Republican Party is Mitt Romney. He’s in charge on November 5th." 

[snip]

Some former Romney aides were behind the recent leaks to media, including CNN, that Governor Sarah Palin was a "diva" and was going off message intentionally. The former and current Romney supporters further are pushing Romney supporters for key Republican jobs, including head of the Republican National Committee. 

You see, it amazes me that, given how badly WardrobeGate damages both McCain and Palin, McPalin campaign staffers are still addressing it. Sure, McCain tried to squelch any discussion of it early on, and if CNN’s correct and Palin went "rogue" with her extended comments yesterday, then they’re still trying to shut down discussion of the issue, even while insisting that they didn’t quite spend $150,000, after they sent the returns back to the store.

So perhaps it’s just a matter of Sarah, now invested more in her future going forward, trying to absolve herself of any responsibility for the $150,000 wardrobe.

Still, I can’t help but wonder how it became such a big issue. In the original story on this, Jeanne Cummings doesn’t describe any insiders tipping her to the expenditure; rather, it looks like she stumbled upon it doing old-fashioned reporting. 

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.

The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.

The cash expenditures immediately raised questions among campaign finance experts about their legality under the Federal Election Commission’s long-standing advisory opinions on using campaign cash to purchase items for personal use.

Politico asked the McCain campaign for comment on Monday, explicitly noting the $150,000 in expenses for department store shopping and makeup consultation that were incurred immediately after Palin’s announcement. Pre-September reports do not include similar costs. [my emphasis]

In other words, the only potential sources she lists who might have tipped her off are the campaign finance people–the only McCain camp contacts she lists are formal requests for comment. 

Still WardrobeGate is the nugget that has set McCain and Palin off at each other, and I can’t help but wonder whether there’s something more to its continued currency as a story.

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85 replies
  1. radiofreewill says:

    EW – I think you’ve been right all along: Wardrobegate will be the ‘reason of convenience’ for McCain to part ways with Palin.

    • perris says:

      EW – I think you’ve been right all along: Wardrobegate will be the ‘reason of convenience’ for McCain to part ways with Palin.

      just not possible with 8 days left to go

      he also said he doesn’t defend her he applauds her.

      this is his running mate, no two ways about that

      • radiofreewill says:

        perris – Under normal circumstances, I’d agree with you all the way. Even under slightly abnormal circumstances, I’d still agree that it’s simply too late to change the ticket.

        However, the Personnel Board’s Troopergate Investigation may find that Branchflower’s Report and their own interviews add-up to a Chargeable/Indictable case of Abuse of Power – Failing to live up to the Ethical Standards required by the job in order to Preserve the Public Trust.

        If Branchflower’s finding that Palin did, in fact, Abuse her Power – Breaking Ethics Laws – gets Validated by Petumenos: then Petumenos and the Personnel Board would have, I would think, a Moral Obligation to Come Forward Before the Election and disclose his/their Findings. It would be a case, and it’s jmho, of a Disqualifying Factor that Should Remove Her from the Race.

        If We had All Known In Advance that Bush would take the Tremendous Power and Trust vested in the Executive, and Pursue – out of all proportion to the Greater Good – a Vendetta of Personal Revenge that Carried him Outside the Bounds of Law in order to ‘get’ his Enemy, then We would never have voted for him – he would be neither worthy nor capable of carrying the Mantle of the Presidents, passed down with care for the last 232 years.

        So, if it turns out that Sarah was, in fact, Abusing the Power of her Office in order to Torture her ex-bother-in-law, Wooten, then – this time – I think We should hear about it before the Election.

        And, if it looks like that’s going to happen, I think she’ll leave the Ticket…over the Clothes.

  2. Quebecois says:

    Looks like McCain is already trying to accomplish his new goal, making sure Palin never gets another job.

  3. MsAnnaNOLA says:

    Palin has been a non-team player from when they pulled out of Michigan. She has been on one team only Team Palin 2012.

    She is deluded like the shrub. She thinks she is a contender.

  4. scribe says:

    Her wardrobe cost more than my house.

    Now, Obama: where’s the TV ad with that tagline (and lots of Yinzer Joe Sixpacks mouthing it before their sturdy Pennsylvania single-family houses in nice neighborhoods with nice schools?

    I mean – it works.

    Unless you want to lose Pennsylvania….

  6. JimWhite says:

    Another little slip: at the very end, she starts to say she is a Gold Star Mom and then quickly corrects to Blue Star. Innocent slip, or does she think she would get more mileage from gold? If I were Track, I’d worry.

    • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

      Indeed. She accessorizes the WardrobeGate so nicely; do I detect a large, golden cat brooch (diamond claw, ruby fangs) somewhere in her new, down-home look…?

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      C.S. Lewis forgives you; a corrupted title beautifully describing another white witch from the North, with equal dedication to soul and truth destroying power over administering government to promote the general welfare.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      The GOP’s problem, and the Dems’ opportunity, is that the Romneys, Liebermans and McCains are all they have to choose from; they are all corrupted by the path they chose to prominence in today’s GOP. A predicament that could, not will, serve the Dems well.

  8. posaune says:

    Gee, is Sarah only storing the campaign’s clothes in her closet . . . just like Ted Stevens stores other’s furniture in his house??? Those people have a strange sense of favors, huh?

  9. maryo2 says:

    I noticed four different pairs of eyeglasses over the weekend. Will they go to charity, too?

    And I do want to know specifically about Piper’s Louis Vuitton handbag. Where is it now? Who is carrying it? Even if Piper was just carrying mommy’s purse off the airplane – who thought the VP candidate needed a $7,000 purse? The photo of Piper with the LV handbag is proof positive that the Palin family sucks off the government teat without hesitation. I’ve heard people like that called “trash” before.

  10. FormerFed says:

    The entire Wardrobegate episode just illustrates how Repugs think. Cindy buys at Saks,etc. all the time, why shouldn’t Sarah?

    Long may the story live – until Palin is back running (???) Alaska and McCain is back being our full time (???) Repug senator from Arizona.

  12. Dismayed says:

    Heh, Heh, Heh. They’re already fighting over the bones and Romney wants to make sure he’s a bigger buzzard than Palin.

      • DefendOurConstitution says:

        Thank you. I am glad you did. Good diary BTW. And thank you for mentioning me (though you don’t really have to).

    • bmaz says:

      i still do not understand where the conclusion that “they are trying to throw the case” comes from. Is it possible; yes. Is there, considering all the facts and circumstances, a better explanation; yes, that the trial team is trying to win the case at all costs.

  14. Peterr says:

    The original story was indeed the product of the Pincus approach to journalism — poring over the records, speeches, memos, etc., and noting the interesting things you discover buried in the fine print and the row after row of data.

    I can imagine the conversations in the various GOP power centers, though, when the story became public . . .

    What idiot went to Saks with the RNC credit card? Didn’t they realize that this would show up like this?

    Who signed off on spending $150K for clothes?

    Who’s going to tell the other candidates for the house and senate “Sorry, folks — we could have bought you a bunch of ads, but we had to get Sarah some new clothes.”?

    The various GOP factions were barely on board with the McCain campaign, with the Fundies getting on board only with the choice of Palin, which simultaneously led the CorporateCons to shake their heads with disbelief. “OK,” they thought, “but this had better work.”

    Then they saw the story on the clothes, and that whole “can’t we just get along?” thing went up in smoke.

    • emptywheel says:

      As far as Cummings, says, yes. But it also leaves open the possibility that some campaign finance experts pointed her to it–in which case you wonder what their goal was.

  15. TobyWollin says:

    Wait a minute – though wardrobegate is important, I think the comments about the former Romney people are even MORE important. It looks as if they are deep-sixing McCain’s campaign…to set the stage for Mitt in 2012. If I were McCain, I’d feel as if I’d been stabbed in the back by these undercover ‘miners’.

    • emptywheel says:

      That’s sort of what I’m wondering. If Mitt is the one stoking the civil war stories, and if he’s using Wardrobegate to do so, what does that say about his fealty to the Republican party?

      • TobyWollin says:

        Marcy – the whole bunch has gone stark raving, foaming at the mouth mad – the next thing you know, you’ll see one of them bite someone in the neck. It’s degenerated into an ‘every man for himself’ thing – everyone flailing around. It really does appear that these people are working on Mitt’s future behalf — the question is: Did he place them there or did they go, as enemy agents on their own?

      • klynn says:

        Actually, when you look at the big scene, I see a politico-religio war between Dobson evangelicals (Palin) and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Romney)…An interesting fight to see within the ranks of the GOP. Now, all the GOP need is to have a Catholic come forward as a possible 2012 candidate and talk about a fight…

        I personally would be dispatching undercover IRS agents to the largest Evangelical and Mormon churches to find out who is violating their non-profit status for political activity and yank their NP status and send a tax bill.

  16. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Palin’s wardrobe, its selection and cost promoted by his own aides, must remind old St. John of what he most hates about his wife. That her earrings cost more than his dad made his entire career in the Navy, and that her career will long outlast his diminishing one.

    Beyond that, the dodge ball both he and Palin are playing with whose responsible is today’s GOP in microcosm. They will spend the next two presidential terms running away from their exorbitantly expensive and destructive outsourcing, their wars, their deficit, their illegal spying and other violations of Constitutional protections. In short, running away from the problems they created, which will haunt Main Street and Wall Street for decades. It shows them both, and their party, in a true light, as ruthlessly selfish cowards who will stop at nothing, both to get what they want and to avoid liability for doing it.

    Obama is far from perfect. But he seems to be a whole person, with a deep well of confidence (which Bush and McPalin sorely lack), and a knowledge of power and the power of restraint, that are essential ingredients to moving forward, if not ahead.

  17. Professor Foland says:

    Am I the only person who thinks that, in terms of resumes you’d like to have while running for president in 2012, became obscenely rich running a hedge fund is probably just below impeached as county dog catcher?

    Mitt Romney: because the country just loved Hank Paulson.

  20. Sara says:

    Actually, I am most interested in the thinking of Campaign Management in this instance — which seems to be, “You are What You Wear.”

    It illustrates how far gone Managers are at this point, believing so deeply in the significance of the illusion that can be fashioned, rather than anything which might actually be authentic. Yes, she might have needed a new dress for the occassion of delivering an acceptance speech — I suspect most of us would feel the same way had we been picked to be a VP candidate — but it was so inauthentic to drape her in something that probably would never be worn in Alaska in a hundred years. The point is not just the cost, or the way upscale store names — it is the destruction of authenticity. And all the way through the McCain Campaign, that has been the pattern. The makeover of McCain as a Robertson-Falwell-Hagee-Dobson Religous guy, for instance, is the same illusion fashioning effort.

    All candidates try to present so as to identify with voters — but what we are seeing here is the total destruction of authentic identity.

    • bmaz says:

      But John McCain has never had an authentic identity. With him it has always been the pitch of convenience and opportunism. This post, and the articles behind it (there are links to them), gives a pretty fair take on this. With McCain, the whole show is totally illusory and framed only to get what he selfishly wants at that moment. It has always been that way with him, this is nothing new. That he would run his campaign this way is as predictable as water flowing downhill.

      • readerOfTeaLeaves says:

        Which, ironically, has made it all the more incredible to watch this year.
        Especially the knives coming out and the GOP bickering.

        Against a background of 100,000 people in Denver (of all places!) supporting the Dems and Obama.
        I still have to pinch myself to believe this is really happening.

  22. freepatriot says:

    remember when we thought Hillary was trying to sandbag Obama

    well, it llloks like maybe we should have been indulging in some of the frumpster’s projections

    Princess Pandora has become the hillary of the right

    cept for the brains and competence an stuff

  31. BoxTurtle says:

    Marcy strikes me as very well prepared. I’m betting she had all the outcomes wrote up already and it’s just cutnpaste.

    Boxturtle (Does this comment get in before her post gets up?)

  32. bmaz says:

    Yeah boy, the prosecution tried so hard to tank this trial that they convicted Stevens of all counts. You may take joy in the verdict if you wish; personally I will take none. My personal distaste for Stevens and his politics, and desire to win his seat, is no match for my desire to have the rule of law followed, due process guaranteed to every defendant, even Ted Stevens, and an honest prosecution with full disclosure and fairness shown to the defendant. All of those latter considerations were completely and heinously violated by this prosecution team. This case should have been dismissed for prosecutorial misconduct before it ever reached the contaminated and bizarre jury process that led to this verdict.

      • bmaz says:

        None. I will be quite some time before that is determined I think; and even when sentencing occurs, I would fully expect that Stevens stays free pending appeal.

    • randiego says:

      completely concur, and if you’re even close, it sounds like he’s got a great appeal case.

      If the case gets tossed on appeal, I’m guessing it will be too late for him to win his seat.

      Still, I’d like them to go back at it with a fresh team and do it right – unless you think that the whole thing is ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’?

      Nation of laws, justice for everyone, everywhere.

  34. Petrocelli says:

    It will be interesting how much jail time the Judge gives Stevens, with the Prosecution’s obvious errors …

    • BoxTurtle says:

      It will be awhile before Jail is discussed. With the prosecution’s obvious errors, the senator has a very good chance of remaining free during appeals.

      Boxturtle (One hopes the prosecution will be sanctioned)

      • Petrocelli says:

        Please explain more for us in the IANAL category … were the errors enough to make him lighten the sentence ?

        • bmaz says:

          The errors should not lighten the sentence, they should result in dismissal of the entire case. Evidentiary and legal errors are not a legitimate factor for sentencing evaluation, they go to the merits.

        • BoxTurtle says:

          I think the errors will have no effect on the sentence, but might well get the verdict tossed on appeal. Given that, I’m pretty sure he’ll remain free on appeal…an appeal that might well outlive him.

          Assuming the verdict is upheld (I’ll leave it to bmaz and EW to specualte on the chances of that), I doubt he’ll serve any jail time. I expect he’ll be fined heavily and as long as he pays up any jail time will be suspended. He’s and old man and once removed from the senate he’s no danger to anyone.

          The judge MIGHT given a minimal sentence in Club Fed if he’s a hardass, say 6 months. But I’d bet against that.

          Boxturtle (Personally, I think a year in the federal custody for him might improve the behavior of other senators. MIGHT)

  35. Sara says:

    So Stevens has to resign from the Senate, given that he is now a convicted felon.

    So Sarah has to leave the Campaign, resign from the ticket, so she can go home to Alaska, and appoint herself to the Senate. Well only for a couple of months, cause she is not on the ballot for that office.

  37. freepatriot says:

    after the botched disclosure ???

    this case is GETTING tossed on appeal

    you can bet the rent on that

    • BoxTurtle says:

      The botched disclosure had no material effect on the trial, the information the prosecution sat upon came out in testimony. The indictment yes/no botch also makes no difference as it was clarified before the verdict. The conduct of juror #9 and the death of a juror’s father were also discussed and the trial proceeded.

      But you put ‘em all together and he’s at least got an appeal that’ll keep him free while it’s argued. I hope EW includes her thoughts on the coming appeal in her next post. *hint,hint*

      Boxturtle (What will he do re: his senate seat?)

  38. freepatriot says:

    is the ew post-a-matic machine on the fritz or somethin ???

    been over 5 minutes since the toobz verdict, and the post isn’t up yet ???

    you guy know your audience

    instant gratification isn’t fast enough for us

    (wink)

  39. DefendOurConstitution says:

    There it is. Another pardon that Bush has to give away before leaving office. Perhaps the rush to do trial before election was not so much to clear his name, but to make sure he could get verdict and pardon before W leaves office?

  42. Leen says:

    Ew/all have you seen this?
    Hagel: Palin “Arguably the Thinnest Resume candidate” for V.P. in U.S. history. With Colin Powell, Christopher Hitchens, Kathleen Parker, Buckley, Chris Matthews etc. ripping into Palin’s lack of qualifications does anyone really think they could be thinking about her for 2012?

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..38211.html

  43. lllphd says:

    ew, sorry to comment without reading them above me here, as i’m sure someone has already made this point. but it seems to me that the mystery is somewhat solved by the fact that it was the RNC that paid for those clothes, not the mccain campaign. given this little piece of the puzzle, the sniping makes sense. i mean, those purchases could therefore have been made behind the campaign’s back for the most part, leading one to suspect someone like, oh i dunno, kristol the killer (with a heartthrob) may have had a hand in it.

    but it all makes chaotic sense to me, really, sort of like watching the logic of monty python films. they’re not predictable, but the lunacy is so consistent and persistent it all makes sense somehow.

  44. Hmmm says:

    Huh. If it all starts with fancy girly clothes, fancy stores, and ultra-high-limit credit cards, then the first character who pops to mind is… Cindy, she of the Amex Black Card. Didn’t the shopping start right about the same time Cindy started getting her nose all out of joint over McJohn’s sudden intense interest in Sarah? Weren’t the expenditures limited to the Palin Family camp, not tainting any of Team McCain? Wasn’t Toobz’ trouble with inappropriately accepting spendy stuff fully evident by then? In short, could this all be Cindy trying to contain the Rogue Sarah threat going forward?

    (And just BTW, how weird is it that everyone in Palin’s family dresses way fancier on the campaign podium than anyone in McCain’s much richer family does… with the single frequent exception of Cindy herself?)

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