Palin + Bridge = Nowhere to Run

I guess she was for the bridge before she was against it. I understand that die-hard Republicans aren't the brightest folks in the basket, but it's hard to understand how even the blindest of the blind can accept Sarah Palin's lies about the Bridge to Nowhere. "If our state wanted a bridge, I said we'd build it ourselves," Sarah Palin said, lying through her teeth to the cheering ("Drill, baby, drill!" Oh, wait, that's another story.) and half-crazed audience in Saint Paul.

Sounds cool. McCain and Palin say they don't want to waste taxpayers' money. Trouble is, at least in Palin's case, it's a sham. A lie. A canard. An untruth. Palin continues to make this claim and it's in a GOP TV ad. That doesn't make it any less true.

Let's turn the clock back to 2006 and allow me to quote Sarah Palin: "We need to come to the defense of southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative." While running for governor, Palin repeatedly stated her support for the bridge that would have connected a town of 2400 to a town of 870.

"Palin was for the infamous bridge to nowhere before she was against it." (Associated Press)

In September of 2006, Palin (still for the bridge) was quoted by the Ketchikan Daily News: "The money that's been appropriated for the project, it should remain available for a link. I think we're going to make a good team as we progress that bridge project." And when people started referring to the bridge as the "Bridge to Nowhere", Palin was photographed in a pro-bridge shirt with the slogan "Nowhere, Alaska 99901". If this is opposition, I wonder what support is.

Eventually Congress was embarrassed into killing Alaska Pork Senator Ted Stevens' project, but even then Palin didn't return federal money that had been sent. She allocated it to building the approach to the bridge that wouldn't be build to nowhere. So that's the "conservative" approach to safeguarding taxpayers' money.

D'oh!

You may already know the rest of the story. In October 2005, Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, tried to move money for the Bridge to Nowhere to fund a bridge to somewhere — one damaged by Hurricane Katrina. That's the point at which Porky Ted Stevens, the indicted Alaska Republican senator (et, tu), threatened to resign and the Senate then rejected spending the money to fix a real bridge to a real location. Even the Heritage Foundation (about as conservative as you can get) called the Bridge to Nowhere "a national embarrassment", but Palin soldiered on.

In November, Congress killed the Bridge to Nowhere, but it was more than a year later that Palin finally decided she should be "against" the bridge.

Although I can understand how the 800 or so people living in the town the bridge would have connected to the nearby metropolis that's about 1/10th the size of the town I live in might have wanted the bridge, I also don't doubt that it would be nice for Congress to approve funding for a heliport near my home so that I could get to work faster. The difference is that I understand why this would be a stupid idea and know that I wouldn't support it even if some yahoo porky congressional critter managed to obtain funding for it.

Now Sarah Palin is against the bridge. According to her, she's always been against the bridge. Except that she was for the bridge before it became embarrassing to be for the bridge. All we have is more lies from the Party of Rove, who learned from the architects of the Third Reich that a big lie, told enough times, becomes the truth in the the feeble minds of the public.