Remember Senator Steven’s defense regarding expensive gifts?
“I refused it as a gift,” Stevens replied. “I let him put it in our basement at his request.”
Uh-huh. Palin is starting to parrot the same defense, as revealed in an AP story:
“Those clothes are not my property. We had three days of using clothes that the RNC purchased,” Palin told Fox News in an interview that aired Thursday night.
Just because those clothes were purchased for my use, are my size, and I’ve worn some of them, does not make them my property. Not my property? Is that some kind of loophole that makes spending $150,000 on clothing in liberal cities over two months suddenly acceptable?
You just can’t make this stuff up.
In other news Palin condemned her predecessor for waste, and then gets caught with numerous acts of waste. Her command of ethics and transparency is suspect.
The real issue in the above story, in fact, is that her campaign paid more for physical appearances than foreign policy of the United States.
An acclaimed celebrity makeup artist for Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin collected more money from John McCain’s campaign than his foreign policy adviser. Amy Strozzi, who works on the reality show “So You Think You Can Dance” and has been Palin’s traveling stylist, was paid $22,800, according to campaign finance reports for the first two weeks in October. In contrast, McCain’s foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, was paid $12,500, the report showed.
That’s $11,400 a week to maintain Palin’s appearance. Can America really afford this? Let’s consider for a moment that Palin argues that if you measure her waste you will like her better than other people who (she argues) wasted far more before her. It is clear they had different kinds of waste, rather than more, but regardless of the waste of others this is about a more universal and grounded concept. The measurements are in and showing clear signs of waste no matter how you look at it and irresponsible financial management in the Palin powder room. A terrible act by another person does not wash away her lesser acts of poor judgment. Her command of even basic ethics is questionable.
Why do I keep thinking about Imelda Marco’s shoe collection?
Just to be fair, it is also possible that Randy Scheunemann is a poor excuse for a policy advisor and not even worth $12,500, whereas Strozzi seems to know what she is doing.
Scheunemann until recently was an open extreme right-wing lobbyist (e.g. he advised Rumsfeld on the “Liberation” of Iraq and look how that turned out) until McCain was forced to take an anti-lobbyist policy stand. Then Scheunemann suddenly dropped his lobbyist credentials and became an “advisor”.
Perhaps the payment was just a symbolic gesture and the real money for foreign policy “advisors” is coming through extra-legal and underground means. For example, Georgia reportedly paid Scheunemann’s lobbying company $200K after McCain condemned Russia.