A massive cosmetic budget for the far right's picks and while they're at it, their policies.
For the first two weeks of October, Sarah Palin's make-up artist, Amy Strozzi, was paid more than, as the NY Times reports, "Not Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser; not Nicolle Wallace, his senior communications staff member."
The latest McCain camp filing with the Federal Election Commission reports that Strozzi was paid $22,800. It's not surprising, in light of the revelations of the $150,000 Palin family wardrobe budget.
It's not surprising when you consider that the McCain campaign, supported with a full lie onslaught by the GOP and 97% of the conservative and neocon world, has literally been a lipstick on a pig campaign-- first trying to to salvage a lackluster presidential candidate with a poorly vetted, surface-attractive VP who has turned out to be shallow and hollow.
Still, stuck in the land of 'de Nile, the pathetic McCain team, when not figuring out juvenile attack tactics, has chosen to invest big bucks in cosmetics, in prettifying a woman who, as America has gotten to know her, has gotten uglier and uglier, except to those longest-marinated in the right wing, theocon, redneck koolaid.
Wall Street Journal political editor, Gerald Seib, predicts in an article today, titled, "No Matter Who Wins, Palin Will Be a Force in GOP. He reports that Palin is "now her party's best fund-raiser." And 98% of Americans know her.
The GOP's problem is that 98% of Americans know her. Her negatives have risen to 47%, up from 27%, and I think they're still rising.
With negatives that high, and a desperate need for leaders, the extremist right that now runs the Republican party had better plan on upping the cosmetics budget a whole lot more. Fox and lipstick and the $150,000 wardrobe budget are not nearly enough.
There's another angle on this. Sarah Palin was chosen because McCain's handlers and McCain thought she'd be an asset, that they could use her looks and her gender to sell the campaign. This is exploitation. In recent days, observers are suggesting that there is no love lost between the two. But Palin's character suggests that she has a history of dealing out just what she's gotten from McCain-- using people, disposing of them when she's done with them, stepping on them as she climbs her Sarah Zamboni fantasy mountain.
Fortunately, there are some things makeup can't hide.