Sarah Palin and John McCain haven’t had the smoothest transition into running mates. Compared to Obama and Biden, especially, the selection of Palin as VP seems impulsive, poorly planned, and suspect.
[A Milwaukee bridge to somewhere]
For instance, Palin’s mantle of being anti-corruption has already been stripped:
In her nationally televised speech accepting the job as John McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said she “championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress” and opposed federal funding for a controversial bridge to a sparsely populated island.
“I told Congress, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ on that bridge to nowhere,” Palin said Friday in Ohio, using the critics’ dismissive name of the project. “‘If our state wanted a bridge,’ I said, ‘we’d build it ourselves.'”While running for governor in 2006, though, Palin backed federal funding for the infamous bridge, which McCain helped make a symbol of pork barrel excess.
And as mayor of the small town of Wasilla from 1996 to 2002, Palin also hired a Washington lobbying firm that helped secure $8 million in congressionally directed spending projects, known as earmarks, according to public spending records compiled by the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste and lobbying documents.
[From Palin backed ‘bridge to nowhere’ in 2006 – USATODAY.com]
So much for being a reformer, though Republicans obviously don’t care too much if their candidates engage in crony capitalism, as long as everyone gets a taste.