RNC and McCain campaign bicker over who paid for Palin's $150,000 wardrobe

I found this story through Americablog. It appears the bickering has now started between the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign. Only this time it is about who paid for Sarah Palin's $150,000 wardrobe:

RNC Chairman Mike Duncan throws back the blame for Sarah Palin's wardrobe by telling MSNBC that the McCain campaign asked for the RNC to pay for the clothes, and it came as part of the coordinated campaign.

This comes after a McCain advisor had said that it was entirely the RNC's call to purchase the clothes (at around the 2:45 mark), and Palin blamed it on party bureaucracy.

Neither wants to be seen as responsible for the clothing blunder.

I also found this story, via Americablog, about the head of the GOP Senate blaming John McCain for "making it a lot more difficult" to win Senate races for the Republican Party:

Nevada Sen. John Ensign, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, on Monday said John McCain’s presidential run is making Senate races “more difficult” for the GOP.

Ensign said there is a “fair possibility” that Democrats could gain 60 seats in the Senate.

“There's no question the top of the ticket is affecting our Senate races and it’s making it a lot more difficult,” Ensign said on MSNBC. “It’s a fairly toxic atmosphere out there with the financial crisis for Republicans.”

So what is happening here? It seems that the blame and bickering game is erupting between the McCain campaign and the Republican Party of the expected GOP rout by Barack Obama and the Democrats. Neither side wants to take the fall.

The Republicans still do not get it. It wasn't Sarah Palin's $150,000 wardrobe "malfunction," or even the McCain campaign's self-destruction that may just hand over a majority-proof Congress and White House over to Barack Obama and the Democrats. It was 28 years of divisive Republican politics, starting with the Reagan revolution, of slashing the government's social safety net, increasing the inequality between the poor and the uber-rich, shifting huge government resources into the military, expanding government deregulation which allowed for unbridled capitalism, charging almost $10 trillion on the government charge card, and promoting a neocon foreign policy of pre-emptive war and alienating the U.S. as the world's bully. This march of divisive, GOP politics expanded greatly under the administration of George W. Bush, ultimately collapsing like a house of cards under the weight of huge economic problems, housing problems, debt problems, and two losing U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Republicans have no one to blame, except themselves, for marching within their own, extreme rightousness of a failed policy platform. No, it was Sarah Palin's wardrobe.

The bickering continues.