A reader asks,
Since I have the highest of respect for the editors of NRO, I’d like to ask you where the rebuttal from the McCain campaign is for the attacks against Palin’s claim around her role on the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere”?
When I heard it in her initial speech, I thought “ok, good line”…but then it soon became pretty apparent that it may allow the other side an opening…so, why not simply drop it from her convention acceptance speech and stump speeches?? It brings little upside and the potential for considerable downside damage. It appears to run counter to “Straight Talk”.
I guess I’m looking for the silver bullet here that would take this one issue away from the Dems but haven’t heard it yet. Not from McCain or Palin or Davis…have you?
I don’t begrudge someone having an opinion I disagree with if they come around to a position I agree with. Yeah, McCain didn’t want to drill offshore for a long time, until gas hit $4 a gallon and he reconsidered his position. Palin did support building that bridge, until the cost to the state – both financially and in terms of ridicule – became prohibitive.
The doesn’t even get into the Stalinist airbrushing at on the web page of the Alaskan Democratic Party, which was previously citing Palin’s cancellation of the Bridge to Nowhere in their attacks on Ted Stevens.
As Glenn Reynolds noted, the New York Times and USA Today noted that Palin “ordered state transportation officials to abandon the ‘bridge to nowhere’ project that became a nationwide symbol of federal pork-barrel spending… She directed the State Transportation Department to find the most ‘fiscally responsible’ alternative for access to the airport.”
Beyond that, it’s a little rich for Obama-ites to criticize Palin for flip-flopping on the Bridge to Nowhere, considering how Obama and Biden voted to fund it, and against an amendment that would have shifted the funding to Hurricane Katrina relief.
Keep in mind, that few of us here in the lower 48 (49, really) have much gripe with the Alaskans building a bridge connecting that city with its airport, using their own money. And if the federal Department of Transportation or someone else wants to argue the bridge is some sort of national priority, I’ll listen to them make the case. But it’s when members of Congress start using the U.S. Treasury as their own personal grand project fund, taxpayers’ fury gets riled…