Palin Admits the Obvious on the Bridge to Nowhere
Steve Benen at Washington Monthly talks about the latest piece of the Sarah Palin/Charlie Gibson interview: her acknowledgment that she initially supported the Bridge to Nowhere, and only switched to opposing it (and kept the money and used it for other projects) when it had become a symbol of pork and Congress had cancelled it. More at Palin reverses course on bridge claim.
Benen writes:
Palin explained, “I was for infrastructure being built in the state. And it’s not inappropriate for a mayor or for a governor to request and to work with their Congress and their congressmen, their congresswomen, to plug into the federal budget along with every other state a share of the federal budget for infrastructure.”
You know what? That’s absolutely true. If a governor wants to go to Congress, hat in hand, and ask for pork-barrel infrastructure earmarks, that’s fine. But here’s the thing: Palin has spent the last two weeks insisting the exact opposite of the truth. It’s not “inappropriate” for Palin to ask for infrastructure money; it’s inappropriate to lie about it.
And as a practical matter, that’s what we’re left with — Palin reluctantly acknowledging to a national television audience that her single favorite talking point is demonstrably false. The anecdote that she used to help introduce herself to the nation was a lie.
The concession leads to two fairly straightforward questions. First, will Palin apologize for having misled voters? And second, are there consequences for a candidate seeking national office who gets caught in this big a lie?
September 13th, 2008 at 8:34 am
The answer to your questions is of course no and no. To the second no, a contemporary example would be Joe Lieberman’s VP run, he miraculously switched from a conservative Democrat to a complete liberal in a heartbeat, even on issues as personal as abortion. When the race was over, he went back to the Republican’s favorite Democrat.
September 13th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
So, according to shcb, Americans have accepted that their candidates for #1 & #2 positions may lie without consequence. If true, the implications are that insanity and evil will triumph.
September 14th, 2008 at 4:55 am
It depends on what the lie is about, and the severity. The American people have a sense of scale
You guys have said all politicians, all people for that matter lie. Barry isn’t friends with Bill Ayers, he could no more disown his pastor than his grandmother, we ran from a hail of bullets, I was against abortion before I was for it, I invented the internet, read my lips no new taxes, I didn’t sleep with that woman, we know there are WMD in Iraq Some of these were lies some weren’t, some had consequences, some didn’t. But evil won’t triumph because a politician was a little fast and loose with the truth, a new day will dawn, we’ll go to work and make our widgets and fill out the endless paperwork, money will flow through the economy and you guys will still be trying to impeach Bush January 21
September 14th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Have you guys seen the McCain interview from last week’s “The View”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyQpmN-nH64
Real journalism, who knew!
October 19th, 2008 at 7:37 am
testing the Federalist 10 link