Tag: McCain

John McCain running mate Sarah Palin misled Republican supporters – Telegraph

I wonder if we’ll see a press release that she needs to “spend more time with her grandson son” soon…

John McCain running mate Sarah Palin misled Republican supporters – Telegraph

The Governor of Alaska gave a misleading version of events over a controversial bridge project in her home state when she made her maiden speech as the presumptive nominee.

Mrs Palin told a cheering audience in Ohio that she had turned down an offer from the US Congress to build the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere”, which would have connected Gravina Island with Ketchikan International, an airport in Alaska’s southeast serving just 200,000 passengers a year. Mr McCain routinely cites the £100 million project as a symbol of wasteful central government spending.

As she introduced herself to Republicans and the American public on Friday, the virtually unknown Mrs Palin said: “I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, 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.”

However it emerged that in a 2006 interview with the Anchorage Daily News during her gubernatorial campaign, Mrs Palin had a different view of the bridge.

Asked “would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?” she replied: “Yes. I would like to see Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now – while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.”

When Congressional funding was withdrawn because of an uproar in Washington about the expense of the project, she cancelled it, but in a regretful tone.

“Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island.”

Yow! Who is in charge of the Republican presidential campaign?

Choosing Sarah Palin seemed like a serious hail mary play when it was first announced. An attempt to out-history-make the democrats. Choosing the Alaskan govenor gains John McCain nothing in the regionally-balancing-the-ticket game. She is so incredibly right-wing that she makes him seem like a socialist. Maybe the idea is that she could bring the evangelicals and super conservatives back to the table. Especially since the chances aren’t small that she would end up finishing his first term if she won. However, she is so radically right that there is a big chance that she’ll scare away any of the moderates that might have voted for McCain. At least any of the moderates that bothered to read a newspaper.

Now it seems like this was a real hail mary play since it looks like no one bothered to vett their VP choice. She fundamentally disagrees with most of McCain’s positions on the environment, abortion and Iraq. She is in the midst of an ethics scandal, troopergate. It looks like she may have lied about her fifth child, that it was actually her daughters’. Even if she didn’t lie, she showed some serious lack of judgment in how she handled the birth. Then there is Dairygate.

All this is just in the first few days after the announcement. Sarah Palin has spent a tiny amount of time in government, but it looks like she is out-scandaling the pros already.

I’d love to gloat over this and laugh about how the republican’s are prepping for an electoral loss that will make Dukakis look like George Washington, but we all know that the democrats can snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory like nobody’s business. Lets just hope that the American people see through the right wing propaganda this time.

Although if they still think off-shore drilling is going to lower the price of gas anytime soon, I doubt it.