Right now the Republicans are aglow with Sarah Palin. But like John McCain they do not know crap about her and the staunchest Fiscal Republicans are scrambling to answer questions on EarMarks.
Take Sen. Jim DeMint from South Carolina:
In February of '08 the local paper stated the Demint was on an "Earmark Crusade"
Congress mandated fewer than 2,700 earmarks that year, according to a count kept by Citizens Against Government Waste. This historically low total came about thanks to an extraordinary, Horatio-at-the-bridge defense mounted by Sen. DeMint and his colleague Tom Coburn, a Republican senator from Oklahoma. The two kept the House and Senate from enacting a goody-laden omnibus appropriation, in effect enforcing a partial moratorium on earmarks. They demonstrated the popular appeal of the anti-earmark campaign and influenced the president to take up the issue. The House Republican leadership has proposed another earmark moratorium for this year.
Ok, fair enough but when confronted with Palin's earmarking the weakest crap I have ever heard came out:
When I was a congressman, I asked for earmarks, too. I'm a recovering earmarker," DeMint said, adding that Palin began to see the problems with earmarks as governor and eventually fought against one of the most infamous of them all, the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere" on the Alaskan coast.
"Recovering Earmarker?" (yeah I know she was for the Bride to Nowhere but the article was writen by the local suck up) So now they are like making up words to destract from what she is.
Keep the earmarking up. This will deflate her in the eyes of the Fiscal Conserviatives. They are living in the bubble right now but this will come back to bite her.