Of Wal-Mart Workers and Cindy McCain's $300,000 Get Up

We know the McCains are just your average family next door.  The McCains are a lot of peoples' family next door, since they own so many houses.  

Republicans talk about the Obamas as elitists, "uppity," out of touch with Americans.  The McCains, on the other hand, understand the daily struggles of working Americans and are committed to fighting for them, because they’re just regular folks like us.  Yeah, right.

Are we to believe that Cindy and John must have scrimped and saved their pennies for weeks to buy Cindy a nice outfit to wear to the opening night of the convention.  And save they did; because by the time the convention started, they had saved enough for Cindy to arrive in the fanciest, priciest dress and jewels in town! 

Can you guess how many Wal-Mart employees' annual salaries it would take to pay for the outfit that Cindy McCain wore on the opening night of the Republican Convention?  You can't guess?  I suppose I'll have to tell you:  It would take more than the full year salary of 18 full time Wal-Mart employees, before taxes and deductions, just to pay for Cindy's dress, shoes and jewelry.  In fact, the total price of those clothes, the necklace, and the earrings worn by Cindy McCain on the first night of the convention alone, was estimated to be over three hundred thousand dollars, just a little more than the average purchase price of a house in the United States in July of 2008, according to the government census bureau.

Cindy McCain's wardrobe is just a symbol of the Republican war on the working class.  The multi-millionaire beer heiress, whose presidential candidate husband says that the middle class is anyone with an annual income of less than 5 million dollars, can't possibly get it. When John McCain says that tax-breaks for oil companies making tens of billions of dollars of profits are necessary because so many Americans' retirement savings are invested in those companies, while we're running up unprecedented deficits and reducing funding for social services, he's fighting against the working class.  He doesn't get it because the working poor and the unemployed, people who rely on those social services, don't exist in the 7-sprawling-houses lifestyle of the McCains. 

Republicans' claims of being the defenders of traditional values and the American Dream are hollow.  They live in a world of limitless wealth and opulence.  Wearing clothes and jewelry that cost more than most Americans' houses seems natural to the McCains, because they know of nothing else. 

While millions of Americans are struggling to keep their homes in the midst of the mortgage crisis and the economic failures of the Bush years, and while hundreds of thousands have already lost their homes to foreclosure, McCain doesn't even remember how many homes he owns.  The charade you saw at the Republican Convention had a message: The Republicans were, and remain, the party of mega-corporations and the very wealthy.

A BuzzFlash Reader Commentary

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