GOP Strategist On Palin's Clothing Allowance: Real Outrage Is "Obama Taking A 767 Campaign Plane To Visit Grandma" (VIDEO)

Republican strategist Brad Blakeman, responding to a question about how John McCain could square his opposition to wasteful spending with the RNC shelling out over $150,000 on clothes and accessories for Sarah Palin, said that the real outrage is Barack Obama "taking a 767 campaign plane to go visit Grandma." This is the same grandmother who raised Obama and who is very seriously ill. Blakeman continued, "Forget about the energy that is wasted, what about the hundreds of thousands of dollars to take a private trip when this guy should be humping his bags on a commercial plane or taking a smaller plane. Taking a 767 of campaign money from people who could least afford it is more of an outrage in my opinion." Anchor David Schuster, laughing, replied, "That is one of the most valiant tries I have ever seen in this entire debate about Sarah Palin's clothing allowance."

[WATCH]

Comments

[jaslyn]

One word for this guy: Loooserrrr!!!!

[toppergem]

Ask a contributor to Obama's campaign, whether or not they have a problem with him going to visit his gravely ill grandmother and see what answer yo u get. It is just like the Republican camp to try to justify the messy things that they do by trying to point the finger at Obama. I respect Obama's decision to go see his grandmother. I would rather have a president who respects family than a president that seems to respect nothing but winning at all cost.

[tuppenz]

I hope that the Obama campaign used my contribution to pay some of the cost of Senator Obama's visit to his grandmother in Hawaii. Money well spent.

[Miami4Obama]

http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/EightDollarsSixtyCents

if any of you want to donate specifically because of this incident please do so here

[babdc]

Now you have sunk to an all time low. Using an ailing Grandmother as a fundraising ploy. That is SHAMEFUL!!! And you complain about Blakeman's comments?

[TyTy121]

Mr. Blakeman's comment was way over the top.

[Pacific231]

You again? The donation page spells it all out. Sorry you are unable to comprehend.

[PJBroughton]

No, Mr. Blakeman, the REAL outrage is the Republican party running amok over our constitution for eight long years. The REAL outrage is a tanked economy. The REAL outrage is the disaster that is GWB/Republican policy. The REAL outrage is in invading another country on false pretenses leaving us quagmired in a useless war for profit. How many lives have been destroyed so Republican cronies can line their pockets?
The REAL outrage is this sad joke called the McCain/Palin campaign...etc..etc...etc...

[jeanrenoir]

Here we have the usual Republican tin ear when it comes to simple humanity and decency. These jerks simply cannot help themselves. As Conrad says of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness: their souls are mad.

[babdc]

What's mad Jean are those who don't practice what they preach. Energy should be conserved not wasted on excess. Remember, Obama was the guy preaching to all us common folk to check our air pressure in our simpleton cars to improve our gas milage. I wonder if he did that on his JUMBO JET before flying off to Hawaii? He wasted energy and money in a critical time. You lead by example and he blew it. Do as I say not as I do, doesn't cut it. You like the rest will never question the Chosen One even when he is wrong. God Bless his Grandmother.

[Momma4Obama]

I guess that flying on a 767 is worse than flying down to Washington with an inviible Superman cape ike your boy McCain, huh! If Obama used a jet to fly to see his grandmother who is GRAVELY ILL, wtf difference does it make? McCain spent money frivolously, so has Obama. BIG DEAL! That has been going on in campaigns since before either of us were born! To try to ride in on your high horse brandishing reprimands for an inexcusable response to a legitimate question is ludicrous in the extreme! Not ONCE did you bring up the SUBJECT to which the post was made, but of your own bias. Save your tut-tutting for the GOP and their despicable tricks and dishonorable slanders against Obama for the most frivolous things!

[MadeinAmericaProud]

you sound just like sarah palin sound bite. how many time you think you need to post this same comment? If it was until you received attention, Here it is. ST U

[macreider]

Before Brad Blakeman rants and raves about Obamas use of a B-767 he should do some research and he would find out that it was a B-757. They are both built by Boeing but are different aircraft. Don't believe anything these so called experts say.

[babdc]

Oh, so that makes it right? A B757 is a HUGE commercial aircraft that holds HUNDREDS of people. So your point is? One man needs to fly for a family emergency so he takes a HUGE plane to get there wasting energy and costing a small fortune and that is ok? oh yeah lets bash the guy for mixing up his commercial aircraft and praise the guy with the sense of entitlement and bad judgment. That makes perfect sense. Mac you don't get it bud.

[darleneslee]

Please let me help you. That wonderful 757 or 767 was not paid for by you unless you contributed to his campaign. I did between my husband and myself we maxed out in contributions individually for the primary and the general. My entire family made contributions of a minimum of $500 dollars and we have a rather large family. G uess what ? We don't care. We are talking about a man's grandmother, who raised him, sacrificed for him, and loved him. Why in the hell after the beating he has taken for the last two years in HIS time crisis are we debating the cost of gas to a human life. A life that was evidently very precious to him. I'd rather contribute to him seeing his dying
grandmother than to have to shop for Ms. Palin

[Miami4Obama]

so tell me what he should've taken?

[AgnesW]

As a frequent air traveller, I am glad that he did not take a commercial flight. in doing so, he would have put at risk every passenger on that flight. He is most likely the next president of this country, and if so, he will be the first African American president of this nation. As such he receives many more death threats than John McCain. Certainly some enterprising wingnut or redneck would have jumped at the chance to assassinate Sen. Obama.

A private jet ensures the safety of Sen. Obama, his family, his staff, including the men and women of the secret service, and finally, the general public.

The closer we get to an Obama presidency, the more incoherent and dangerous the rabid right grows. Look at the pitiful McCain volunteer in PA. Egged onto to madness by the McCain's campaign of racialized rhetoric of domestic terrorism [which no doubt only amplified her own underlying mental problems].

[RicJustis]

I stand corrected
My Original comment--
“Obama contributors paid for that 767… Obama contributors own that 767…. And, as a contributing Obama supporter I say he can use that 767 to visit any sick relatives he wants....... Dumb ass”

Correction--
“Obama contributors paid for that B-757… Obama contributors own that B-757…. And, as a contributing Obama supporter I say he can use that 767 to visit any sick relatives he wants....... Dumb ass”

Thanks for staying on the job..Good work.

[TrishB]

Well--let's see---take a commercial flight to see his Grandmother, with all the secret service protection and others that make up the protection of this candidate--REALLY? I am embarrassed for some of these people and their comments. Incredible lack of character, empathy or decent humanity is so evident by far too many. Shame on them.

[babdc]

Trish you just don't get it. His choice of transportation is a huge excess. It wastes energy and money. He could have easily taken a much more efficient mode of travel, like a G5 that has the legs to get him there safely with the staff, press and secret service requirements. If he wastes "his" money so carelessly in perilous economic times how will he spend ours? You dear are the one who should be embarrassed. Obama has a sense on entitlement and elitism which is reflected again with this very bad decision. You have to walk the walk and talk the talk. He who is without Sin........Don't cast stones on Palin, if you can't take the heat as well.

[dmclean]

Using airplanes for campaigning is indeed wasteful....but you don't get to Hawaii from the East Coast of the US on a small plane. The difference here is that Obama is going to see his dying grandmother and a Republican strategist wants to compare that to buying expensive outfits at pricey retailers...If you don't see the idiocy of that comparison then of course you don't understand why McCain is loosing...talk about someone who feels entitled to the Presidency. McCains only upcoming cabinet selections will be choosing new ones for his seven kitchens.

Furthermore, if you polled the over 3 million contributors to Obama's campaign and asked if they though going to see his dying grandmother was a waste of their money, I bet you they don't. I sure don't mind it...It's in the best interest of the campaign and the country that he is about to run that he is able to do what he needs to in order to emotionally handle his last surviving ancestors death. Ask the Republicans who are seeing every congressional race slip away from them if they feel that Palin's outfits were the best use of their $150,000 and I'll bet you get a different answer.

Oh, and get used to calling the elite (the word obviously has a different meaning to Republicans than the one in the dictionary) Mr Obama, Mr President in the near furure.

[nisha]

I'm sure there would be security issues involved if he were to use another plane. I'm amazed that this dork thinks someone so valuable for our future should be schlepping the cattle car with less than two weeks to the election. Besides, it's not as if he's using exactly the same coin that you and I and Joe Chardonnay contributed to the campaign--- funds of such magnitude are surely placed in interest bearing accounts, even in these troubled times.

[littleddemocrat]

Does this guy not love his grandmother or something? I can't attribute his comments to all Republicans because all the Republicans I personally know are decent and love their grandmothers.....He has a plane, he took it. For all we know, the trip served a campaign purpose -- he got out of the way so McCain and Palin could fall all over each other for a few days without him around -- which they did.

[Meah]

Gosh, I wonder if anyone will have old Brad on their airtime again? I frigging hope not. Find another job, Brad. You are a loser.

[BushHatr]

A G-5 would have been a lot cheaper and would have held the necessary SS agents. He just needed the extra 767 seats for the press corp to cover his visit to Grandma

[lakephillip]

This man is a fartious blow hard I used to ff through him when he used to be on Dan Abrams.
Sad, Sad, Sad.

[suhud]

Guess this means if McCain's mother becomes dangerously ill before the election, strategists will huddle and come up with the idea of Johnny waiting in line for an economy seat while she fades away? Something tells me the desperate old man would go along with the photo.op. Shameless.

[Resnic]

I find Obama's use of the plane reasonable since he has to transport Secret Service personal, etc. and anyway, didn't President Bush fly to Phoenix in Air Force One and participate in a McCain private fundraiser? We are talking about clothes, makeup, etc. which could have been purchased in Macys or Target. To slam someone for seeing his ill grandmother is loathsome.

[JTyroler]

You know what the real outrage is? People who can't afford to donate to the Republican Party to pay Brad Blakeman to spout total nonsense on cable news.

To put the RNC's buying clothing for the frugal Sarah Palin into perspective, my dad worked as a grocery clerk in Missouri. His gross income for a DECADE probably would not have covered the cost of the clothing that the RNC bought for Sarah Palin and her family.

[FlamingLibrul]

McCain is so desperate, he's letting his surrogates go looney-tunes all over the media. Maybe he figures he has nothing to lose. Attacking Obama for responding to a family emergency is beyond despicable. This is courtesy of the party that claims moral superiority, and "Godliness." The republican party has been hijacked by a fringe element of bigots, fundamentalists, and white su premacists. I hope the GOP implodes so badly, it will take them longer than GW's reign of disaster to put the pieces back together again.

[mari2JJ]

If you do not see the legitimate reasons for Obama taking the Jet to visit his very ill Grandmother and silly expendature for designer clothing for Sarah Palin, the McCain campaign is doomed to continued failure. I know you would like to make certain Obama is lost in Hawaii and unable to return to the campaign at the earliest moment, but that does not make your assessment correct. We are not so stupid to note that Palin had enough clothes that made her well dressed as the Alaskan Governor so why are you into this big whine. You might just as well admit that the McCain campaign is tone deaf about matters that make him an elitist. I admire Obama's return to Hawaii to pay his respect to the Grandmother who supported him since he was born on Oahu and during his growing up years. So I thank him for the example he sets when it comes to paying his tribute to his grandmother. Obama lost no time worrying about how his trip would affect his electoral chances, never thinking some nut like you would whine about his use of the airplane. For me, I hand it to Obama. At a time when he made this sacrifice could mean the difference between a win and a loss, Obama chose to do the right thing. Try as you might, you cannot sully that record no matter how political you want to act to try to demean Obama.