Gosh darn, it costs to be a hockey mom!

In these difficult economic times, you’ve got to wonder how it’s going to go down with “Joe Six Pack” and all those other “Hockey Moms” down at the carpool when they hear about Sarah Palin’s big ticket shopping spree courtesy of the Republican National Committee. Yes, all you fiscal conservatives out there – aren’t you glad to know that the hard earned dollars you donated to the RNC went to such items as a one-day spree at for $75,062.63 at Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis in early September? Or $4,716.49 on hair and makeup?

Politico broke the story yesterday, and it’s starting to get legs today. The McCain campaign issued a statement trying to deflect attention:

“With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it’s remarkable that we’re spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses,” said spokesperson Tracey Schmitt. “It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign.”

It would be much easier for the campaign to go with that line if they hadn’t been spending the last two weeks trying to make out like they were the party of the working class, of the “Real Patriotic America”. I wonder how many “Real Patriotic Americans” in those small towns out there, how many military wives, how many farmer’s wives, how many teachers and nurses, how many…well, hockey moms in the carpool – how many of them could afford to go drop $49,425.74 at Saks Fifth Avenue. How many of them can even afford to shop at Saks in the first place?

And since the McCain/Palin ticket have been so fond of the guy, let’s put this in “Joe the Plumber” terms. What Palin has spent on clothes in a month is over four times the the median salary ($37,514) for a plumber.

I didn’t buy Sarah Palin’s hokey “I’m just an ordinary hockey mom” schtick during the vice-presidential debate and it turns out it wasn’t just hokey, it was hocus pocus.

It’ll be interesting to see if the same pundits who spend hours bloviating about John Edwards’ $400 haircut will have anything to say about Palin’s $4,000 hairdos. After all, even if Edwards got a $400 haircut ever week, it would take him 7.2 years to rack up the kind of expenditure Sarah Palin cost the RNC in a month.

Not to mention the legality of it all. As Politico notes:

The cash expenditures immediately raised questions among campaign finance experts about their legality under the Federal Election Commission’s long-standing advisory opinions on using campaign cash to purchase items for personal use.

It’s not just the RNC who’s been opening up the purse for the Palin family. The Alaskan taxpayers have been charged $21,012 for her three daughters’ 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since Palin took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls. It’s one thing if they were all for official business, but apparently many of these trips were for events to which the girls had not been invited. After she’d been selected as VP candidate and the records were being subjected to scrutiny, Palin went back and amended the expense reports to say “First Family attending” or “First Family invited.”

Maybe she is a maverick after all – if she defines “maverick” as meaning “The rules apply to everyone except for me.”

Either way, she doesn’t look like a good fiscal conservative – or an average Joe.