Well, well, well. So it begins. John McCain's "Ready to Vet on Day Three" has begun.
Thanks to a lack of vetting on the McCain camp's part, the stories of who Palin really is start to roll out as reporters begin vetting a VP pick the McCain camp failed to.
This from the Boston Herald:
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - When John McCain introduced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate Friday, her reputation as a tough-minded budget-cutter was front and center.
"I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere," Palin told the cheering McCain crowd, referring to Ketchikan’s Gravina Island bridge in Alaska.
But Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it.
More below the jump
Let's continue examining her role in the Bridge to Nowhere and other claims:
The Alaska governor campaigned in 2006 on a build-the-bridge platform, telling Ketchikan residents she felt their pain when politicians called them "nowhere." They’re still feeling pain today in Ketchikan, over Palin’s subsequent decision to use the bridge funds for other projects - and over the timing of her announcement, which they say came in a pre-dawn press release that seemed aimed at national news deadlines.
"I think that’s when the campaign for national office began," said Ketchikan mayor Bob Weinstein on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Weinstein noted, the state is continuing to build a road on Gravina Island to an empty beach where the bridge would have gone - because federal money for the access road, unlike the bridge money, would have otherwise been returned to the federal government.
It’s a more complicated picture than the one drawn by McCain, a persistent critic of special-interest spending and congressional earmarks. He described Palin as "someone who’s stopped government from wasting taxpayers’ money on things they don’t want or need."
McCain also claimed to have found, in Palin, "someone with an outstanding reputation for standing up to special interests and entrenched bureaucracies" and "someone who has fought against corruption and the failed policies of the past" and "someone who has reached across the aisle and asked Republicans, Democrats and independents to serve in government."
So there's that, but more starts to trickle out about Palin's claims to be a maverick politician taking on the 'Big Boys':
Palin told the crowd she had signed a major ethics law - an appropriately modest claim, because although she pushed for the ethics changes, the main impetus had come from state legislators, especially minority Democrats.
The article examines other claims made by Palin:
As with much of Palin’s sun-kissed career, her timing was ideal: she was able to cut property taxes by three-fourths because sales tax revenues from the city’s new big-box stores were soaring. She even pushed for a sales tax increase to build a pet project, a new sports complex for ice hockey.
Similarly, as governor, she has presided over a state flooded with new oil revenues, brought by high oil prices and a new tax regime she pushed over industry objections. She vetoed $268 million in state capital projects this year, but her cuts came out of an unusually swollen capital budget.
"It would be hard not to appear conservative with the huge budget approved by the majority (GOP)," said state Rep. Beth Kerttula, D-Juneau, the House minority leader.
Palin and the Legislature both were criticized by some conservatives for not making more effort to slow growth in the state’s operating budget.
Back to the "Bridge to Nowhere":
In September, 2006, Palin showed up in Ketchikan on her gubernatorial campaign and said the bridge was essential for the town’s prosperity.
She said she could feel the town’s pain at being derided as a "nowhere" by prominent politicians, noting that her home town, Wasilla, had recently been insulted by the state Senate president, Ben Stevens.
"OK, you’ve got valley trash standing here in the middle of nowhere," Palin said, according to an account in the Ketchikan Daily News. "I think we’re going to make a good team as we progress that bridge project."
One year later, Ketchikan’s Republican leaders said they were blindsided by Palin’s decision to pull the plug.
I'm sure as more time passes and the media do the job of vetting the McCain camp should have done Palin will more and more be shown to be Dan Quayle with a Pony Tail.