Palin-tology (VII) – Loosing the plane (in style)

Is Palin about to go native? Some think so as the campaign enters its final full week.

The US press reports that long-brewing tensions between republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin and key aides to Sen. John McCain have become so intense, they are spilling out in public. In the words of one republican insider – she has lost the confidence of the plane [in which the all travel together].

It is turing into a real triumph of style over substance for hot on the heels of the £90,000 clothes bill it is now reported that the highest paid member of team Sarah is in fact her make up artist. Amy Strozzi was paid about £15,000 for her work as Palin’s makeup artist for the first half of October, according to documents filed on Thursday by the McCain campaign with the Federal Election Commission.

Palin’s traveling hair stylist Angela Lew, the fourth highest paid individual during that time, was paid about £7,000 over two weeks in October for what the campaign called “communications consulting.” 

The second and third highest paid individuals in the first two weeks of October were Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser at about £7,500, and Nicolle Wallace, McCain’s senior communications staffer at £9,000.

Strozzi and Lew have traveled full-time with the campaign since early September. They do hair and makeup for Palin for all her events and media interviews.

Meanwhile some pundits are now talking about a Democratic grand slam on November 4th with both houses of congress and the presidency under single party control. Charlie Cook at the National Journal sums it up:

This is a toxic political environment for Republicans. That’s why they will probably lose at least seven seats in the Senate and at least 20 in the House. Having former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or former eBay CEO Meg Whitman or even Mother Teresa as McCain’s running mate would not have changed that. And, with Bush’s job-approval rating in a recent Gallup Poll at 25 percent, my National Journal colleague Ronald Brownsteinhas noted that McCain would need the support of one-third of all voters who disapprove of Bush’s performance in order to reach 50 percent in a general election. With Republican Party identification down from parity four years ago to a 10-point deficit, this race would have been incredibly hard for the Republican nominee no matter what.

Although this contest was very competitive over the summer and could have gone either way before the stock market crashed and the credit markets seized up, arguably it has become virtually unwinnable for McCain. The nation’s economic problems feel very personal and very painful for nearly everybody who has looked at their 401(k) or other retirement account statements and seen that a quarter or more of their retirement savings have evaporated. Many voters even held stock in venerable companies, including some of those long considered among the safest around, and have watched in horror as those investments turned almost worthless.

Could Obama break 300 when the electoral college votes are in?

A betting man might fancy an tenner on that one.