Christophr Orr over at tnr.com flags down this youtube showing an internecine feud on the right over the Sarah Palin wardrobe issue. Orr correctly points out:
Notice what's missing from all this skirmishing? Anyone associated with the Democrats or the mainstream media. At this point, Barnes, Wallace, Kristol,Palin, Duncan,et al. are just about the only ones keeping this story alive.
Orr goes on to claim that is the opening round of a 2012 battle between Palin and anti-Palin factions of the GOP. I think this is about right (although I don't believe she will be a serious candidate at that time). It's rather remarkable to see the conservative media keeping a story like this alive and debating it in such a way. It certainly shows a lack of discipline from the GOP that they can't get a unified message out through what should be a friendly media outlet.
Finding somebody to blame for the outfits should be a non-issue, because the issue itself is a non-issue. Mini events like this may serve some small significance in occupying one news cycle, but beyond that their effect has to be pretty minimal. This isn't saying that these things can't play some role; John Edwards 500 dollar haircut got some play among the late night comics. But after the Iowa Caucuses, I don't know of any serious analysis that showed it factored into anybodies decision.
The fact is the wardrobe issue came about well after the McCain/Palin ticket starting plummeting in the polls, and even further after her negatives had gone sky high. The finger pointing between Republicans seems to be more a pre-loss blame game than anything else. If the ticket goes down in failure, and it increasingly looks like it will, there will be several decisions and moments in which we can look back at and see where the race was lost. This one however, won't be one of them.
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