Sarah Palin’s wardrobe

"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.

What phony outrage, said Jazz Shaw in The Moderate Voice. We all spend what we can afford on clothes. Sarah Palin is "in the public spotlight" so it's easy to understand why she and the campaign want to spend what they must for her to "dress and look her best." There are important matters to debate in the two weeks before the election, and this isn't one of them.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

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."