Martin Eisenstadt’s Blog

Many of you have asked me why I subjected myself to the ongoing indignity of being featured in that BBC “documentary” called “The Last Republican” that’s been featured on YouTube this past week. All in all, I’m happy that the message of John McCain gets through and that people see the hard work it takes to campaign for him. Even if some of my words are taken out of context or re-edited for effect. Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Thanks to my associate Danny Sadler, the Harding Institute is finally entering the digital age full-steam ahead (hey, why not use a 19th Century metaphor for 21st Century technology?). Danny just posted this video on the Harding Institute’s new YouTube channel:

Of course, as I say, any press is good press, so I hasten to also show you the newest two episodes of “The Last Republican” that were posted yesterday. You’ll see here that I met with a so-called “community organizer” whom I suspect has political ambitions akin to Barack Obama. It’s clear that he was hustling me (you can see, even the BBC titled part 6 “the Hustle”) for some cock-a-mamie scheme. I’m already starting to work on a response to these:

I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about whether I was the McCain advisor who told CNN anonymously that Sarah Palin was behaving like a “diva.”  Just because the RNC spent over $900 for her spray-on tan, and I haven’t been shy about letting that nugget get out of the bag, people think that I’m the one loading the ammunition on the circular firing squad.  Hmmm.

Now I’m not usually one to toot my own horn, especially when it comes to this blogging stuff. But when both the New York Times and Washington Post come out with big scoops about Amy Strozzi, one of Sarah Palin’s makeup artists earning more than Steve Schmidt or Charlie Black, I have to sit back and laugh a little. I’m not sure if they were inspired by, or reported in spite of, the post I made here almost two nights ago suggesting that those inclined to criticize Sarah Palin’s wardrobe expenses might want to take a look at her makeup, too. As I said, one of her “other” makeup artists, Tracy Thorp, owed over $145,000 in back taxes. If the Times and Post want to just sit around and play East Coast elitist gotcha journalism, they may as well do it right. While they’re at it, they should probably have found out just who Ms. Thorp is and why if she’s such a great makeup artist, she doesn’t have any professional credits at all. (unlike Emmy-nominate Amy Strozzi, one of who’s last films was called “Bondage”).

I was a wee bit curious, too, so I talked to a colleague who was in the prep suite in St. Paul with Sarah, and it turns out Tracy was brought in exclusively to apply a spray-on tan to the future Veep. Yup, that’s what Tracy’s specialty is: According to her MySpace page, she runs a company called “tans n lashes by tracy” (that’s Tracy in the picture, and the spray-on tan shot is from her MySpace page, too). Apparently, Sarah had what’s affectionately called an “eskimo tan” when she showed up at the Convention. They needed to brighten her up, and even out her tan for all the new cleavage and leg-baring fashions. And given John’s history with melanoma, he insisted on a spray-on for Sarah. Thorp was paid $900 plus expenses to come into town for the job. How did Tracy get the job? My guess is that she’s pals with Angela Lew, Palin’s hair stylist who lives in Thousand Oaks, California, and works at a salon called The Hair Grove in Westlake Village - all just a few miles or so from where Tracy lives (and literally walking distance from Westlake High School, where according to her MySpace page, Tracy graduated). The Times reports that Cindy McCain gets her hair done at the Hair Grove, too, so maybe Tracy was there to do a touchup on Cindy, too?

In any case, I’ll take dibs on the inevitable puns: Sarah was “Palin’ comparison” before she had the tan.

And while we’re in the makeup department, it’s worth noting that the NYTimes and Wasington Post neglected to notice that Amy Strozzi wasn’t the only one from “Dancing with the Stars” to help Sarah Palin look her best. On the same disclosure Form F that revealed Jeff Larson and Tracy Thorp’s expenditures, you can also see that Heather Cummings charged $3300 for makeup services, too. Who’s Heather Cummings? She shared an Emmy nomination with Amy Strozzi for her work on “Dancing with the Stars.” But no fancy meals for a professional gal on the run like Heather. She needed her pep, and charged the campaign $3.25 for a “meal” from Starbucks.

UPDATE: The RNC paid over $1000 to fly in Tracy to do an all-over spray on tan for Sarah. 

With all the hoopla yesterday about Sarah Palin’s clothes, and how the RNC paid Jeff Larson to keep her looking better than Hillary Clinton (note to Hill… maybe if you dressed as nicely as Sarah, you might have won), one name that seems to escaped attention so far is Sarah’s makeup consultant Tracy Thorp. Of course the “gotcha” cops who rode all over Joe “The Plumber” are undoubtedly going to start digging in Tracy “The Makeup Artist’s” trash in Newbury Park, California (a suburb of LA), and they’ll notice that her husband’s company, Wilson Masonry, has a tax lien of $145,718. So it shouldn’t be surprising that Tracy would jump at the chance to work for the McCain/Palin ticket and make a few extra bucks putting lipstick on the Alaska governor. With the economy the way it is, the Thorp/Wilson family needs all the help they can get.

I’m starting to see a pattern of things that I say and do being taken out of context by a wiley reporter with a sultry British accent. After our interview, she got in touch with Danny and he - very generously I think - shared some footage we had at the Institute of me in Iraq. But does she show the shots of me meeting with Paul Bremmer or President Maliki as we helped to build the Iraqi democracy? No, she takes some inconsequential tape of me - quite legitimately - working to establish a telecommunications infrastructure in the country as part of a project with AID, and makes it look like I’m some sort of Crazy Eddie pitchman for cellphones. Well, you can see for yourself:

When I mentioned the other day that Barack Obama would be appearing on the last episode of Saturday Night Live before the election (possibly related to Lorne Michael’s donation to his campaign), there were some naysayers who suggested it was rank speculation based on a drunken comment from Seth Meyers at last week’s afterparty. But yesterday’s Los Angeles Times confirmed it:

And asked about possible candidate appearances on the two “SNLs” before election day, [Lorne Michaels] replied, “Yes, but … until they’re in the building, I’m not going to talk about it.”

The story was also confirmed directly by Seth Meyers when he appeared on public radio’s show “Fresh Air”:

Seth Meyers, head writer of SNL was interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air earlier today. Meyers said that originally Obama was going to be on last week, but this was cancelled due to his visit to his grandmother in Hawaii. Meyers said that both Obama and McCain have an open invitation to appear but that nothing is known for this weekend.

In the meantime, I’m happy to say that our original story was picked up far and wide: Defamer, VH1’s Best Week Ever, HuffingtonPost, The Weekly Standard, The New York Observer, nsideNewYork, Nerve.com, Mollygood, EvilBeet, ArtistDogBoy, TheVelvetHottub, BlogDance, SarahPalinUpdates, nsideLosAngeles, Jossip, Showhype, Stereohyped, Examiner, ThePajamaPundit, TVSquad, Meaningful Distraction, Extra!TV

When I read the AP report that Sarah Palin had charged the state of Alaska for travel expenses, I thought - wow! this is great news for the McCain-Palin ticket! Just two weeks before the election, the left-wing media at NBC and CNN are going to get all high and mighty about Sarah bringing the brood to such things as the National Governor’s Association. As expected, there was pretty-boy Anderson Cooper bloviating tonight about the “breaking news.” He could barely contain himself (ironic, since as a three-year old kid, Cooper appeared on The Tonight Show, when his mother Gloria Vanderbilt was Johnny Carson’s guest… that’s little Anderson on the left….)

The point is that this is a sucker’s bet for the left. From what I heard from Charlie Black today, the campaign did some quick testing with women, and this story comes out a winner for the McCain campaign. What working mom wouldn’t want to take her daughters to New York’s Central Park South Essex House or Philadelphia’s Ritz-Carlton for a weekend away from dad and the boys? And I think it was far more educational for Bristol to go with her mom to meet with Goldman Sachs executives and go to the New York Stock Exchange than stay in Alaska for the week with Levi. If anything it beefs up Sarah’s economics credentials, and should get Bristol lined up for a nice internship at the Treasury Department. All in all, this story will be a plus for all those Hillary Clinton women still sitting on the fence about McCain/Palin.

The real question is how Sarah negotiated a room rate of $215.46 a night at the Ritz-Carlton in Philly for the girls, when their quoted rate is $399 a night. In my book, that shows sound fiscal responsibility and the kind of tough negotiating skills Sarah will need to deal with Wall Street bailouts and Kim Jong-Il. The people of Alaska should be thanking her.

But the left should be happy, too. Despite Sarah’s explicit pro-life views, nowhere in the AP report does it appear that Sarah charged the state of Alaska for travel expenses for either her own or her daughter’s unborn children.

Well, the second episode of that BBC documentary called “The Last Republican” has apparently been posted on the YouTube. In this one, I visit John McCain’s Southern California headquarters, and unfortunately there was some sort of mixup when we got there. My assistant, Danny - a terrific guy, BTW, who’s been spearheading our web efforts of late - couldn’t get through on the phones in advance. Probably because volunteers were clogging up the lines with outgoing campaign calls. The young woman in the office was just doing her job, and by the time we got back to D.C., she had sent me a nice letter of apology. No worries. It’s not easy running the LA office.

Also, for the record, I should point out that when I suggest in the video that the McCain campaign is outsourcing our calling to India, that was obviously a joke. It appears to have been taken out of context for this film. With all these attacks about our robocalling, what do you expect from the media?

Recently, a BBC crew followed me around for a day while I campaigned for Senator McCain in California. As I travel a lot and give many interviews, I barely remembered said day until the filmmaker contacted me to say that the documentary entitled “The Last Republican” was completed and that it is primarily about me.

Well, the first episode is up and apparently there are several to follow. As with any documentary, the subject, in this case me, is occasionally mocked (what can you expect from the left wing media?), but I think, all in all, our message gets across and a sense of the difficult and important work that we do is conveyed. I remember how James Carville and George Stephanopolis’ careers soared after they were featured in “The War Room” documentary. So who knows? Better to be seen warts and all, than not at all, I always say.

And remember, polls are deceptive. I’ve seen the campaign’s internal numbers. This race is tight. So make sure you go out and vote. And get your friends to vote. The future of our country and my bank account depend on it.

As most of you know, the Joe “the Plumber” story is all anyone could talk about for the last day and a half. It’s gratifying to me on a personal level that everyone from CBS News to Michelle Malkin have quoted me with on the issue, and given me credit for starting the story. And while I’m certainly no fan of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, he tacitly acknowledged the point I made on my original blog, when he said this on last night’s show:

If you Google that name and up pops a Robert Wurzelbacher…and that Wurzelbacher was the son-in-law of Charles Keating of the Keating Five, if you’re running a campaign and you do that and that name comes up…don’t you cross Joe off your list, don’t you cross that name off your list of stunts solely to avoid that name being mentioned even once?

While it’s been very amusing to see the left-wingnuts dig through every public record in America searching for “proof” that Joe’s related to Keating (including the fact that he once lived on W. Keating Drive in Mesa, Arizona - in an apartment building once developed by…Charles Keating), they all miss the point. As I told Ben Smith of Politico during a conversation yesterday, the issue isn’t whether Joe Wurzelbacher is a nephew, the grandson, or even the eighth cousin of Charles Keating. The point is that he wasn’t vetted at all by our campaign. The Los Angels Times today quoted an anonymous campaign aide (probably not me) who said:

The aide said the campaign did not vet Wurzelbacher and didn’t see the need. “We did not look into background….We do not have time or interest in vetting all of them,” the aide said.

As a long-time campaign professional, you learn the basics. And this sadly points to a campaign that is stretched on all fronts, fighting tough defense on a wide field. The one bright spot is that we finally found a way to get people to stop talking about the economy.

Finally, thanks to one of our fans for putting together this list of blogs that linked to me yesterday:

Business Week, Crooks & Liars, Bay State Liberal, All Headline News, AOL News, Wizbang Blue, Michelle Malkin, DailyKos (Trinity29), The Burned Over District, Firedoglake (emptywheel), John G. McDaid, Big Dan’s Big Blog, Dallas South, Poor Mojo Newswire, Kudzu, Mon Amour, Muckmakers, Jeff Juliard, Chris Capone, Repeated Expletives, The Moderate Voice, Blog Bites, 23/6, Blue Herald, Neil Rogers, Cogitamus, Talking Points Memo (plebnista), Boulder Blog, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Suzie Q, CNN and others.  Here’s some more: The Randi Rhodes Show, Slate.com, Taegan Goddard’s Political Insider, What Really Happened,