Remember that fiction created by Ronald Reagan about the "Welfare Queen," the myth of a woman who defrauded the Welfare system who was riding around in a new Cadillac?
That bit of fiction, which Reagan hammered home in speeches, helped win over the "Reagan Democrats" in middle class and working class America.
Well, my friends, the time has come to fashion a new story about a new queen, and this story has the virtue of being true: Sarah Palin is... "the Earmark Queen."
More after the jump...
Here is an outline of Reagan's use and abuse of the term "Welfare Queen."
When a welfare recipient in Chicago was publicly exposed in 1977 for having defrauded state welfare programs out of $8,000 by using two identities, Reagan transformed the news report into a story regarding a "welfare queen" who drove a Cadillac and who collected an annual tax-free income of $150,000 by using "eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and . . . collecting veterans’ benefits on four nonexisting deceased husbands."4 Reagan repeated this story of the Chicago welfare queen multiple times over the years, growing it like some kind of political fish-story with each re-telling. In the end, it seems clear that he could not distinguish his own mythical version from the historical one.
And what an effective mythology it was. The reason Reagan kept repeating this story ad nauseum was simple: it worked politically. It hammered home the point that the government bureaucracy was ripping off the taxpayer, that government bureaucracies were not to be trusted.
Fast forward to 2008...
Here we have John McCain spouting his platitudes about being a crusader against federal earmarks. He famously made this erroneus statement in a GOP debate in January:
And I’m proud to tell you, Chris, in 24 years as a member of Congress, I have never asked for nor received a single earmark or pork barrel project for my state and I guarantee you I’ll veto those bills. I’ll ask for the line item veto and I’ll veto them and I’ll make the authors of them famous.
Even if that were true - which it isn't, as ThinkProgress points out - I'm less concerned with his performance on earmarks as opposed to the horrible legislative record he has compiled in the light of day. Sometimes he talks about earmarks as if they are the sole vehicle for delivering pork barrel projects to a home district. John McCain's legislative history and lobbyist connections suggest a far more sinister agenda at hand. McCain doesn't necessarily care all that much about Arizona per se.
McCain puts on his reformer hat in public, but delivers CORPORATE PORK to all the key GOP corporate donors and lobbyists. So they will let him wear the mask of reform on issues like campaign finance and immigration reform, but they know McCain's true worth lies in his ability to get the fat cats fatter. McCain's "mavericktude" shields him from this reality.
But I digress. Back to how to turn earmarks into Obama votes in November.
The L.A. Times just ripped McCain a new one over Sarah Palin's true record on earmarks.
John McCain got it wrong Friday when he asserted that his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, had not requested any earmarks, the spending directives lawmakers insert in spending bills that McCain has vowed to eliminate.
Palin, in fact, requested $198 million in federal earmarks in February, including such expenses as $487,000 to fight obesity in Alaska and $4 million to develop recreational trails.
The Washington Post noted on Sept. 2nd that earmarks were near and dear to Palin's governing modus operandi. WaPo link here.
The Seattle Times actually wrote an article with this headline:
Palin's earmark requests: more per person than any other state
A sampling of the wisdom...
As she introduced herself to the nation Friday as the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin touted her record as a reformer who worked to end the "abuses of earmark spending in Congress."
But earmarks have never been a dirty word in Alaska, a huge state dotted with small communities that have enormous dollar needs for sewers, roads and other projects.
Instead, earmarks — pet projects that members of Congress fund but that no federal agency has requested — have become a mainstay of political life here, and one that Palin embraced from early on in her career as a mayor of Wasilla to the governor's mansion in Juneau.
Full article link here.
So what we have here is a mismatched Hapsbug marriage of "The Anti-Earmark Maverick King" and "THE EARMARK QUEEN." And it is time to play this up to the max. Imagine this commercial...
[Clip of McCain at GOP debate with quote as noted earlier in diary] But Sarah Palin never met an earmark she didn't like. [show full list of earmarks requested by Palin while Mayor of Wasilla and Governor of Alaska.] And while Palin tells Americans she opposed the "Bridge to Nowhere," not only did she support it, but she kept the federal money even after the project was killed. So how can you trust John McCain to curb wasteful federal spending when his running mate is... "The Earmark Queen."
Case closed.
NEVER STOP FIGHTING TILL THE FIGHT IS DONE!!!
GO OBAMA!
UPDATE: Kossacks - if the continued earmark lying is to stop, then we need to put a stop to it by creating an alternate, truthful narrative. I think my basic premise of Palin as "Welfare Queen" is solid. Let's see some comments to hear what you all think.