WAsn't she FOR the bridge before she was against it? and then she kept the federal money after they untagged it- despite saying they didn't want the money?
washingtonmonthly.com
Palin's speech was rather routine, but there was a paragraph that stood out for me:
"...I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress -- I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said we'd build it ourselves."
The McCain campaign has been flagging this pretty aggressively this afternoon. It's a shame, then, that Palin wasn't exactly telling the truth. As TNR's Brad Plumer explained, Palin actually supported the funding for the much-derided bridge project.
That's not a good start for her very first public appearance as the Republicans' VP candidate.
We will learn more about the pork issue.
Palin's special counsel, John Katz, wrote in March of this year for the Juneau Empire, assuring the Alaskan public that Palin was still very much in favor of earmarks, but sadly needed to scale back her requests somewhat (to "only" 31 earmarks this year—down from 54 last year) in response to "unwanted attention" from Congress and the press.
Also, I believe she went to Kuwait to visit National Guardsmen, and not into Iraq. |
