This via Instapundit
NICE V.P. CHOICE, KID. DON’T GET COCKY. Lots of Republicans are excited about the Palin pick. My email is full of stuff (if I missed your email, sorry — I’ve been flooded even by my usual drinking-from-a-firehose standards), Memeorandum is overrun with items, and the enthusiasm of the G.O.P. grassroots is at levels that would have seemed impossible just a couple of weeks ago. But I think that Republicans should be careful about launching a cult of Sarah Palin. She’s the V.P. pick, not the head of the ticket. She’s still a relative newcomer to national politics. She’s virtually sure to commit at least one major mistake between now and November. And — yes, I know I said this before — she’s the V.P. pick, not the head of the ticket. The Dems built a cult around Barack Obama. It energized some folks, but it ultimately backfired. Republicans might want to restrain themselves just a bit, here.
I could not have put it better myself. The worst thing that the Republican Party could do right now, is the same thing that the Democrats are doing with Obama. Especially when stuff like this comes out, in the Wall Street Journal:
The Bridge to Nowhere argument isn’t going much of anywhere.
Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the McCain campaign continues to assert that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the federal government “thanks but no thanks” to the now-famous bridge to an island in her home state.
The McCain campaign released a television advertisement Monday morning titled “Original Mavericks.” The narrator of the 30-second spot boasts about the pair: “He fights pork-barrel spending. She stopped the Bridge to Nowhere.”
Gov. Palin, who John McCain named as his running mate less than two weeks ago, quickly adopted a stump line bragging about her opposition to the pork-barrel project Sen. McCain routinely decries.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain (right) and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, at a campaign rally in Lee’s Summit, Mo.
But Gov. Palin’s claim comes with a serious caveat. She endorsed the multimillion dollar project during her gubernatorial race in 2006. And while she did take part in stopping the project after it became a national scandal, she did not return the federal money. She just allocated it elsewhere.
“We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge,” Gov. Palin said in August 2006, according to the local newspaper, “and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.” The bridge would have linked Ketchikan to the airport on Gravina Island. Travelers from Ketchikan (pop. 7,500) now rely on ferries.
A year ago, the governor issued a press release that the money for the project was being “redirected.”
“Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer,” she said. “Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island. Much of the public’s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened.”
On Monday in Missouri, Gov. Palin put it this way: “I told Congress thanks but no thanks for that bridge to nowhere. If the state wanted to build a bridge we would built it ourselves.”
Something tells me, this whole narrative, as Peggy Noonan put it, could blow up in the Republicans faces. I’d be very careful, if I were them.
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