Who wears the cloth coat in this election?

The big, trivial news today on the presidential election was that the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 on clothing for the vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin.  The money was spent in the last two months at upscale department stores like Neiman Marcus.  I am reminded of what Nixon considered a salient point in his family’s qualifications to be the First Family – that his wife still wore a “cloth coat” rather than a fur and was therefore an everywoman.  How far the Republican Party has come in a few decades.  Now a huge amount of money needs to be spent to doll up a woman selected for her imagined appeal to regular people.