Party repossesses Palin 'shopping spree' outfits

Suited and booted: Sarah Palin in one of her campaign outfits

SARAH PALIN faced a bitter backlash from John McCain's allies today as it emerged that Republican Party lawyers were heading to Alaska to retrieve her $150,000 (£95,000) campaign clothes.

The vice-presidential candidate's hopes of challenging Barack Obama in 2012 took a big dent as simmering tensions with the McCain camp finally boiled over into wide-ranging criticism of her conduct.

In a string of damaging briefings, it was claimed that Mrs Palin had spent "tens of thousands" more on her clothes than budgeted for, that she once met McCain aides dressed in nothing but a towel and that she did not know Africa was a continent.

In separate claims made in the latest issue of Newsweek magazine, the Republican vice-presidential nominee was reported to have been told to buy three suits for the Republican convention, and to hire a stylist.

Instead, she went on a spending spree in upmarket stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.

Quoting unnamed sources within the McCain camp, the magazine alleges that most of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who "was shocked when he got the bill".

One angry aide described the shopping spree as something like "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast", and predicted that the truth would eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

It also emerged that Mrs Palin wanted to deliver her own concession speech after Senator McCain delivered his own in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday. The presidential candidate vetoed the idea as a blatant attempt to get her 2012 campaign off the mark.

The magazine also claimed that Mrs Palin used low-ranking staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards, and that up to $40,000 (£25,000) was spent on clothes for her husband Todd. A number of articles of clothing have been lost, the magazine states.

Fox News has reported that Mrs Palin did not understand that Africa was a continent, not a country, and did not know which countries were in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Newsweek also claims that at the Republican National Convention in St Paul, when aides Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her, Mrs Palin walked into the room wearing only a towel, with another on her wet hair.

She told them to chat to Todd, adding: "I'll be just a minute."

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