This one is pretty bad. The McCain campaign and GOP activists who are starved for someone to add excitement to this campaign have been touting Sarah Palin as a “reformer.” In her speech introducing herself to America, she bragged about being against the infamous “bridge to nowhere,” the ultimate example of government waste and earmark abuse.
Well, it turns out that she was actually FOR the bridge to nowhere back in 2006 when she was running for governor. The Anchorage Daily News has the details:
When John McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate Friday, her reputation as a tough-minded budget-cutter was front and center.
“I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere,” Palin told the cheering McCain crowd, referring to Ketchikan’s Gravina Island bridge.
But Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it.
The Alaska governor campaigned in 2006 on a build-the-bridge platform, telling Ketchikan residents she felt their pain when politicians called them “nowhere.” They’re still feeling pain today in Ketchikan, over Palin’s subsequent decision to use the bridge funds for other projects — and over the timing of her announcement, which they say came in a pre-dawn press release that seemed aimed at national news deadlines.
“I think that’s when the campaign for national office began,” said Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Weinstein noted, the state is continuing to build a road on Gravina Island to an empty beach where the bridge would have gone — because federal money for the access road, unlike the bridge money, would have otherwise been returned to the federal government.
This stinks. I’m sure she’s done some good things in Alaska, but this makes her look like the poster child of cynical politics and political opportunism. Alaska is notorious for living off of money from the federal government because they have slimeballs like Senator Ted Stevens funneling money to the state. Sarah Palin was happy to get that money, and she was happy to make the bridge a campaign issue when she needed to get elected governor.
Now she’s trying to claim the opposite position while ruuning for national office, AND she’s using it as an example of her “integrity.”
It’s galling that she would do this, but it’s amazing that she thought she could make this ridiculous claim without getting called on it.
