McCain Campaign Piles Up New Falsehoods On Bridge To Nowhere (TPM)

McCain Campaign Piles Up New Falsehoods On Bridge To Nowhere
from TPM Election Central by Greg Sargent and Eric Kleefeld

McCain and his advisers are now conceding that, yes, Sarah Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it -- but they're casting this as more proof of her reform credentials.

In so doing, the McCain camp is piling new falsehoods atop the old ones.

McCain himself rolled out the new push-back on the campaign trail today, saying the following:

"The fact is that Gov. Palin learned that earmarks are bad and she did say, we don't need our bridge to nowhere, and we will pay for it ourselves if we need it. I mean, that is just a fact."

Meanwhile, McCain adviser Tucker Bounds appeared today on MSNBC, where he acknowledged that Palin used to favor the bridge, but said she turned against it for good reasons.

"But as it became more wasteful, the budget ballooned, it became a staple for wasteful spending, she said No," Bounds said. "And she was the one that drove the nail in the coffin that killed the bridge to nowhere."

Nope.

It's bogus to say that Palin turned on the project because the costs ballooned. The real reason she came around to opposing it was not that the overall costs went up -- the project was always a boondoggle, and costs were always going up -- but that one particular element of the project's cost ballooned: The portion that Alaska would have to pay, instead of getting the money through federal pork.

In her statement finally ending the project, Palin explicitly lamented that fact. "Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329-million short of full funding for the bridge project," Palin said at the time, "and it's clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island."

As for the claim that Palin drove a stake into the project's heart, the project was practically dead already by the time Palin officially shut it down, as the non-partisan CQ's PolitiFact section pointed out. She shut it down after it became clear that Congress would no longer fund it -- meaning that Alaska would have to use its own $329 million to build it, thus leaving Palin no other choice but to shut it down.

Bottom line: Palin did not tell Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks," on the bridge. It was Congress who cut off the money to Alaska. Oh, and she didn't Say No To Pork, either -- when Congress wouldn't spend that money on the Bridge, Congress did allow her to keep it for other projects. And she did.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/mccain_campaign_piling_up_the.php

If the Chicago Cubs said we think Wrigley Field is just too old, let's get America to pay $400 million for a new Wrigley field, and Obama submitted an earmark for that, how would that have gone over?

And a baseball stadium is probably much better for a community's welfare than some bridge to nowhere.