"Lipstick isn't the only difference between America's top hockey mom and a pit bull," said Kenneth Bazinet in the New York Daily News. "Sarah Palin also has a spectacular new wardrobe" that cost Republican campaign donors $150,000, according to a Politico report. Democrats must be "salivating" over all the ways this news will help them ridicule John McCain's running mate.
Democrats will probably have "a lot more fun with this story than is prudent," said Marc Ambinder in The Atlantic online. "But the heat for this story will come from Republicans who cannot understand how their party would do something this stupid." This much spending on clothes and makeup is "without precedent," and many GOP activists and donors are disgusted.
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This story might not go away without doing some damage, said Kate Linthicum in the Los Angeles Times online. Palin's shopping spree—at high-end retailers such as Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue—doesn't exactly fit into the small-town image Republicans are trying to sell to Joe Six-pack. And "if there's one thing political journalists love, it's a whiff of hypocrisy."