Palin 'bounce' swept away by clothes row
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Tim Reid in Washington
SARAH Palin sought to defend herself against claims of extravagance yesterday as the storm over her $150,000 clothes budget refused to disappear.
The Alaska Governor insisted she was frugal in her private life, but she was unable to quell the growing feeling that she is a handicap to the Republican ticket of US presidential candidate John McCain.
New polls yesterday suggested she had become a bigger liability for Mr McCain than any other factor.
In an interview with the 'Chicago Tribune', Mrs Palin said of reported purchases of clothes from exclusive New York shops such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus: "If people only knew how Todd [her husband] and I shop so frugally. My favourite shop is a consignment shop in Anchorage, Alaska, called 'Out of the Closet'."
She said the clothes were not hers to keep and the criticism had been "painful".
Her comments came hours before she was due to give a sworn deposition in a second investigation of the so-called Troopergate case, in which she is accused of violating ethics laws when she fired the state's top law enforcement official allegedly because he refused to sack her former brother-in-law, a state policeman who was involved in a bitter divorce battle with her sister, Heather.
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll yesterday found that 47pc of voters viewed Mrs Palin as their No 1 worry on the Republican ticket. Only 38pc of voters saw her as a positive. Her inexperience and faltering responses to foreign policy questions have helped to erase the "Palin bounce" that boosted the ticket in the fortnight after she was chosen.
More than 55pc now think that she is unqualified to be president -- a strong possibility if 72-year-old Mr McCain gets elected. (© The Times, London)
- Tim Reid in Washington
