While politicians have always taken certain liberties with fact and circumstance, the McCain-Palin ticket has, true to their newly discovered message of 'change,' taken it to a whole new level. In every speech given as McCain's running mate, the moose-hunting hockey mom from Alaska has boasted that she told Congress "thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere." Palin, like McCain, has also criticized Obama's earmark requests as typical pork-barrel spending. There are two problems with this line of argument: Palin championed the bridge to nowhere as a gubernatorial candidate and as Governor, and has led the nation in earmark requests in her two years as Alaska's chief executive (it wasn't even close).
First, let's look at Palin's record with respect to the bridge. In 2006, Palin told the Anchorage Daily News that she would like to see the bridge "built sooner rather than later. The window is now -- while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist." Once elected, Palin reiterated her support for the project. "We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge," she said, "and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative." Only after the bridge became a national scandal did Palin change her mind. Of course, that didn't stop her from keeping the money which had already been earmarked for the project.
Which brings us to Palin's record on earmarks. During her tenure as Mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired the town's first Washington lobbyist and succeeded in extracting tens of millions of taxpayer dollars from the federal treasury. Notwithstanding her success in Washington, Palin managed to leave Wasilla $20 million in debt. And in less than two years as Governor, Palin has asked for $750 million in federal earmarks, by far the largest per-capita request in the country.
So if McCain and Palin are indeed "the original mavericks," why do they look so much like the establishment?
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