"Spinmeister" Sarah Palin

You have to give Sarah Palin credit: she has the remarkable ability to lie out of both sides of her mouth.

The candidate has used her "crusade" against earmarks as the centerpiece of her all-too-brief tenure as governor and her chief qualification for the vice-presidency.

As a gubernatorial candidate in 2006, she championed the Gravina Island Bridge to Nowhere project (emphasis mine):

"We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative," Palin said.

And now that the Bridge to Nowhere has become a political liability?

Palin claimed she "championed reform of earmark spending by Congress, and I told the Congress thanks but no thanks on that 'Bridge to Nowhere,'" she said, omitting mention that she'd campaigned for governor supporting the bridge. "If our state wanted a bridge, we’d build it ourselves."

Sounds awfully Spinmeisterish, does it not? I mean, it sure sounds as if Palin has turned the Bridge to Nowhere project she so dearly loved into "something that's so negative". That couldn't be because it's no longer convenient for her, is it?

How did she feel two years ago about the Alaska Congressfolk who pushed the bridge project in Congress, the same guys who lobbied for barrels upon barrels of pork to be sent back to her state? She couldn't get enough of them...especially the scandal-plagued Rep. Don Young:

"And our congressional delegation, God bless 'em. They do a great job for us," she said at the forum hosted by the Alaska Professional Design Council. "Representative Don Young, especially God bless him, with transportation -- Alaska did so well under the very basic provisions of the transportation act that he wrote just a couple of years ago. We had a nice bump there. We're very, very fortunate to receive the largesse that Don Young was able to put together for Alaska."

Yeah, Governor, God bless Don Young, and God bless the pork he brings home! Until he, and his pork projects, have also become a political liability.

Then the "largesse" you are so "fortunate" to enjoy, it seems, become a campaign prop to further your own political ambitions.

Then you send your lieutenant governor, Sean Parnell, to try and take him out in the Republican primary. God bless Don Young, right up until the point where he is no longer useful to you.

But, you know, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Let's be clear; these aren't the moves of a maverick, or a reformer, or a pitbull, or whatever the hell else Sarah Palin is supposed to be this week.

These are the moves of a thoroughly Machiavellian politician who would sell out every one of her friends and principles to advance her political career.