Pro-Palin Spin Going Nowhere Fast
Posted on September 11th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
|
Reihan asks:
So will we stop hearing that Palin “lied” about the Bridge to Nowhere? I’m guessing we won’t.
Well, Reihan, we will keep hearing about it because she has been lying.
The relevant facts concerning Palin and her false “Bridge to Nowhere” claim are these. As a gubernatorial candidate in 2006, she supported the project and objected to the derisive name that she now uses to score points. At the time that she was a candidate, she said:
OK, you’ve got Valley trash standing here in the middle of nowhere…I think we’re going to make a good team as we progress that bridge project.
In reaction to public criticism about the project, Congress still allocated the money to Alaska but not for the purposes of building the dreaded bridge. Palin accepted the infusion of federal dollars for use on other projects. When she said, ”Thanks, but no thanks” to the bridge, the feds had already pulled the money for that project, which means that she decided, abent federal pork, she would not go ahead with the project using only state money. So her later rejection of the bridge project was a concession to political reality, and not the high-minded opposition to wasteful pork that she wants you to think that it was, since she was quite glad to take the money. Here’s the main thing: no one would care whether she supported the bridge project or not, except that she and McCain have made her opposition to the bridge project the centerpiece of her public persona as a great reformer and fighter of government waste, and McCain insists that all earmark spending is inherently wasteful and wrong. By McCain’s own standard, Palin’s eventual opposition to the bridge project is beside the point–it is federal pork as such that he finds offensive and which he now claims Palin has combated as part of his effort to make Palin into a credible reformer of Washington. It is hardly inspiring that she has to make false statements in order to make this central claim, and it is deeply troubling that the “reform” ticket is daily making claims about Palin’s record that only the most generous partisan could accept as honest.
To hear her tell it, she was some bright-eyed champion of halting earmark spending who wanted nothing to do with that ridiculous “Bridge to Nowhere.” The reality was that she very artfully changed her position to fit the new political circumstances. Meanwhile, the people in Ketchikan (a.k.a., Nowhere) remember how she exploited Alaskan resentment at the national derision of their area to win support for her bid for governor, only to turn around on the national stage and use the same derision to put herself on the same page with McCain. From the Reuters report:
During her first speech after being named as McCain’s surprise pick as a running mate, Palin said she had told Congress “‘thanks but no thanks’ on that bridge to nowhere.”
In the city Ketchikan, the planned site of the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere,” political leaders of both parties said the claim was false and a betrayal of their community, because she had supported the bridge and the earmark for it secured by Alaska’s Congressional delegation during her run for governor. The bridge, a span from the city to Gravina Island, home to only a few dozen people, secured a $223 million earmark in 2005. The pricey designation raised a furor and critics, including McCain, used the bridge as an example of wasteful federal spending on politicians’ pet projects. When she was running for governor in 2006, Palin said she was insulted by the term “bridge to nowhere,” according to Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein, a Democrat, and Mike Elerding, a Republican who was Palin’s campaign coordinator in the southeast Alaska city. “People are learning that she pandered to us by saying, I’m for this’ … and then when she found it was politically advantageous for her nationally, abruptly she starts using the very term that she said was insulting,” Weinstein said.
The story goes on:
The state, however, never gave back any of the money that was originally earmarked for the Gravina Island bridge, said Weinstein and Elerding.
In fact, the Palin administration has spent “tens of millions of dollars” in federal funds to start building a road on Gravina Island that is supposed to link up to the yet-to-be-built bridge [bold mine-DL], Weinstein said.
“She said ‘thanks but no thanks,’ but they kept the money,” said Elerding about her applause line. Former state House Speaker Gail Phillips, a Republican who represented the Kenai Peninsula city of Homer, is also critical about Palin’s reversal on the bridge issue. “You don’t tell a group of Alaskans you support something and then go to someplace else and say you oppose it,” said Phillips, who supported Palin’s opponent, Democrat Tony Knowles, in the 2006 gubernatorial race.
A press release issued by the governor on September 21, 2007 said she decided to cancel state work on the project because of rising cost estimates. “It’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island,” Palin said in the news release. “Much of the public’s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here.”
Perhaps the most damning part of this lie is that it shows that Palin has engaged in the same sort of derision of Ketchikan when she is on the national stage that she correctly identified in Obama’s San Francisco comments on small-town Americans. You can say that this is simply the way of things, or you can say that this is just what politicians do, but you cannot say that she represents some burgeoning new reformism when she has not done the very things she is claiming as proof of her reform credentials.
More to the point, if she has actually worked to reduce other earmark requests for Alaska, that is the sort of claim she ought to be making publicly. Palin “stopped” the bridge after a significant component of its funding had been denied by Congress; she “stopped” the bridge when it had become a national symbol of wasteful pork and a target of derision. In other words, right up until the project became politically radioactive her instinct and her public position was to support it. It is true that Alaska Republicans supported the bridge and in zeroing out state funding Palin eventually broke with them, but it is equally true that she broke with her old position on the bridge, which had been identical with the position taken by the Alaska Congressional delegation. Indeed, as she said during her race for governor, she supported state funding for the project and thought it important to get the federal funding while Alaska’s Republican representatives in Congress were still in the majority:
I would like to see Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now - while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.
Give her credit for good political instincts, but please stop trying to say that she is being honest with the public about this issue.
P.S. Here is Factcheck.org’s assessment of Palin’s claims, including this important point:
Palin accepted non-earmarked money from Congress that could have been used for the bridge if she so desired. That she opted to use it for other state transportation purposes doesn’t qualify as standing up to Congress.
Of course, that doesn’t even begin to touch her remarkable success in securing earmarked spending for Wasilla, which she has very wisely avoided discussing since being named to the ticket.
Update: One more thing. As part of her announcement and convention speeches, Palin has said about the bridge project:
If we wanted that bridge, we’d build it ourselves.
But she did want that bridge (see the above quote), and given the choice of “building it ourselves” or not building it, she opted for not building it. So even this little rationalization at the end is false.
Second Update: Reihan has a follow-up post. I would still say that Palin and McCain have been lying about this, but I am glad to see Reihan say this much:
Palin’s approach to the Bridge to Nowhere smacks of rank opportunism, not unlike the use by some basically pro-trade candidates of harsh anti-trade rhetoric.
That’s not a bad comparison, but I think a better comparison would be Obama’s claims about his record on welfare reform. His pandering on trade was pure primary gimmickry, which he abandoned as soon as necessary, but what Palin is doing is to take something imposed on her by political necessity and attempting to make it appear to be the result of her virtuous reformism. Like Palin with the bridge, Obama can claim he technically supported it at some point despite his vociferous opposition to the substance of the legislation he was helping to authorize. Obama supported “moving people from welfare to work” in just about the same way that Palin “stopped” the bridge project–he came around to supporting it after there was no other viable option. There is some shred of truth to both claims wrapped up in giant balls of distortions and misrepresentations. However, contra the good Prof. Ramey, her claim about stopping the bridge was not “entirely true” and not even close to it. She said something that was much, much closer to being entirely false, and she had to know that this is what she was doing. If that isn’t saying something that you know not to be true, I’m not sure what it is.
free viagra
buy viagra online
generic viagra
how does viagra work
cheap viagra
buy viagra
buy viagra online inurl
viagra 6 free samples
viagra online
viagra for women
viagra side effects
female viagra
natural viagra
online viagra
cheapest viagra prices
herbal viagra
alternative to viagra
buy generic viagra
purchase viagra online
free viagra without prescription
viagra attorneys
free viagra samples before buying
buy generic viagra cheap
viagra uk
generic viagra online
try viagra for free
generic viagra from india
fda approves viagra
free viagra sample
what is better viagra or levitra
discount generic viagra online
viagra cialis levitra
viagra dosage
viagra cheap
viagra on line
best price for viagra
free sample pack of viagra
viagra generic
viagra without prescription
discount viagra
gay viagra
mail order viagra
viagra inurl
generic viagra online paypal
generic viagra overnight
generic viagra online pharmacy
generic viagra uk
buy cheap viagra online uk
suppliers of viagra
how long does viagra last
viagra sex
generic viagra soft tabs
generic viagra 100mg
buy viagra onli
generic viagra online without prescription
viagra energy drink
cheapest uk supplier viagra
viagra cialis
generic viagra safe
viagra professional
viagra sales
viagra free trial pack
viagra lawyers
over the counter viagra
best price for generic viagra
viagra jokes
buying viagra
viagra samples
viagra sample
cialis
generic cialis
cheapest cialis
buy cialis online
buying generic cialis
cialis for order
what are the side effects of cialis
buy generic cialis
what is the generic name for cialis
cheap cialis
cialis online
buy cialis
cialis side effects
how long does cialis last
cialis forum
cialis lawyer ohio
cialis attorneys
cialis attorney columbus
cialis injury lawyer ohio
cialis injury attorney ohio
cialis injury lawyer columbus
prices cialis
cialis lawyers
viagra cialis levitra
cialis lawyer columbus
online generic cialis
daily cialis
cialis injury attorney columbus
cialis attorney ohio
cialis cost
cialis professional
cialis super active
how does cialis work
what does cialis look like
cialis drug
viagra cialis
cialis to buy new zealand
cialis without prescription
free cialis
cialis soft tabs
discount cialis
cialis generic
generic cialis from india
cheap cialis sale online
cialis daily
cialis reviews
cialis generico
how can i take cialis
cheap cialis si
cialis vs viagra
levitra
generic levitra
levitra attorneys
what is better viagra or levitra
viagra cialis levitra
levitra side effects
buy levitra
levitra online
levitra dangers
how does levitra work
levitra lawyers
what is the difference between levitra and viagra
levitra versus viagra
which works better viagra or levitra
buy levitra and overnight shipping
levitra vs viagra
canidan pharmacies levitra
how long does levitra last
viagra cialis levitra
levitra acheter
comprare levitra
levitra ohne rezept
levitra 20mg
levitra senza ricetta
cheapest generic levitra
levitra compra
cheap levitra
levitra overnight
levitra generika
levitra kaufen
Filed under: politics
14 Responses to “Pro-Palin Spin Going Nowhere Fast”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
[...] Daniel Larison brutally puts the brakes on that nonsense: [...]
I agree that the claims of the McCain/Palin campaign about the bridge are misleading. But almost everything said by both campaigns is misleading. This could be more misleading that other things, but I’m just not sure why people insist on calling it a lie. FactCheck.org says she flip-flopped, and so did the Obama campaign originally, and this seems like a completely true statement. Maybe she even flip flopped for completely ignoble reasons. But if she flip-flopped then it just follows as a matter of logic that `She opposed the bridge’ is true, and also that `She supported the bridge’ is true. That’s just what it means to flip flop. Where have I gone wrong here? Or do you deny that she flip-flopped on the bridge?
Look, what Palin and McCain say about Palin’s opposition to the bridge is misleading. But almost everything said by both campaigns is misleading–that can’t be what you’re upset about. Now, I might concede that the bridge stuff is particularly misleading. But I’m not sure why you want to call it a lie. According to FactCheck.org, and to the Obama campaign, Palin flip flopped on the bridge. And that seems to be the truth. Perhaps she flip-flopped for completely ignoble reasons. Maybe. But if she flip flopped, then it just follows as a matter of logic that `Palin opposed the bridge’ is true. That’s what it means to flip-flop. Because she flipped, both `Palin opposed the bridge’ and `Palin supported the bridge’ are true, although both are misleading. What am I missing here? Or do you deny she flip-flopped?
I agree that she flipped her position, but all of her statements since being made the VP nominee give the impression that she always opposed it and that she was somehow particularly instrumental in shutting down the project. We are seeing a deliberate effort at deception, and I call that lying. The important point here is that she flipped her position only when the pork spending had been taken away from the project, so to say that she opposed the project after it was effectively dead is to say that she yielded to the new political reality. It says nothing about her underlying desire to reform anything, nor does it fit with the story that they are telling about her. She keeps saying that she told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks,” but it was, in fact, Congress that told Alaska and Gov. Palin, “Tough luck–we’re not paying for that.” When she had the chance to say, “No thanks” when it would have counted for something–during the election when it would required real risks on her part–she did not. She wants you to think that pretty much the exact opposite is the case, and I find that dishonest.
I would add that I have been equally unforgiving about Obama’s misleading and false statements, such as his questionable claim about supporting welfare reform, when he was simply supporting the almost-unanimously-backed state authorizing law of a federal welfare reform bill that he publicly opposed. I don’t like dishonesty and exaggeration in politicians’ rhetoric, which is why I was such an unrelenting critic of Romney for his many fraudulent and false claims about himself and his record, and I find it particularly galling when it goes to the heart of a candidate’s self-representation to the public.
Fair enough–I don’t like politicians being misleading either. I’m only concerned to point out that to lie is to say something (you know to be) false. Since Palin did oppose the bridge, it’s not a lie for her to say she did. (`I told congress thanks but no thanks’ is clearly not intended to be literally true.)
I suppose the question of how misleading the claim is becomes pretty important. (I wouldn’t quibble with saying something that was technically true but REALLY misleading was a lie. It’s certainly dishonest.)
Since my understanding is that during her tenure as governor she drastically reduced the number/amount of earmarks requested, and since that’s the issue (who cares about one bridge, it’s what the bridge signifies), I don’t find her comments excessively misleading. (By my lights, not as misleading as, say, saying `McCain said that anyone who made less that $5 million isn’t rich’.) In any case, the question of just how misleading her comments are probably isn’t one that can be conclusively settled.
I think Augustine has a discussion of lying somewhere. The upshot is that saying something intending it to cause a false belief (or a belief the speaker does not actually have) is lying. Asserting a false proposition is neither necessary nor sufficient to constitute a lie. It doesn’t matter if the statement is semantically true. Not that “Thanks, but no thanks” was semantically true.
I will respectfully disagree with Augustine on this matter. Perhaps the only relevant moral kind is dishonesty, and what Augustine says seems like a decent account of dishonesty. But that is not the way `lie’ is used today. In any case, almost every single thing any of the (major) candidates say would count as a lie under that definition. In which case we would need some other reason to be particularly upset by the statement under discussion.
The false claim is at the core of the justification for adding her to the ticket and dubbing her a reformer. If that is not enough reason to find the deception offensive, I’m not sure what would be.
In addition, she repeats the lie as an applause line at every campaign stop.
Also, she hired an Abramoff-affiliated lobbyist as mayor of Wasilla, obtained an absurd amount of earmark funding, but managed to leave the city in debt nonetheless.
Also, as with the bridge, she was a big Ted Stevens supporter until it became expedient to distance herself from him.
Every word about her being a reformer– allegedly the reason McCain was drawn to her– is a lie. Yet Daniel is more or less the world’s only conservative willing to criticize her forthrightly. All I can think is that she is popular for reasons of identity politics.
“Every word about her being a reformer– allegedly the reason McCain was drawn to her– is a lie.”
This is the last time I’m going to say this, but in the English language a lie has to be something (known to be) false. And `Palin opposed the bridge’ is in fact true, no matter how misleading it is. And, whether or not Palin really is (in the eyes of God) a reformer, she was certainly believed to be a reformer by pretty much everybody at the time she was selected, so I have a hard time thinking that McCain knew that this almost universal opinion of her was mistaken. (For the pedants-almost universal among the people who knew her.)
As evidence, just look at what the press said about her prior to the pick. I read everything I could find on her: from the Alaskan newspapers to articles in the Times, USA today, and the WSJ. Any article that mentioned her political career at all claimed she was a reformer. Were the authors of all of those articles suffering from a peculiarly similar delusion? In any case, it is eminently plausible to think that McCain believed she was a reformer when he picked her, since everyone else did.
In any case, here’s why I believe Palin is a reformer: (1) she changed the tax code that was unfairly kind to oil companies; (2) she fought corruption in her party, leading to the resignation of two people more senior than her; (3) she drastically reduced the number and amount of earmark requests as governor; (4) she is responsible for ethics reform that had significant effects “on the ground”.
Unless I’m wrong about the facts, Palin has done significantly more reforming than most politicians. Hence it is not a lie to say `Palin is a reformer’. I’m not saying she’s some big hero. I’m not even saying she would make a good VP. But I find that there is a peculiar animosity (amongst some) towards her, just as there is a peculiar animosity (amongst some) towards Obama. Small time reformers are a dime a dozen, just give that to her. It certainly doesn’t automatically qualify her for the vice presidency.
I’m sorry, but defending the statement “Palin opposed the bridge” is like defending the statement “I did not have sex with that woman, Ms Lewinsky.” We can say that either is technically not a lie, as long as you abide by a narrow time frame or definition. But neither one is the truth.
Back in the Clinton era, I believed conservatives were at least somewhat less likely to indulge in Clintonesque contortions. Now, I fear that there’s nothing to conservatism, particularly McCainism, but tortured logic, technicalities, faux outrage, and outright lies.
Ferret–what do you mean by `technically not a lie’? Do you mean something technically true? If so, then you contradict yourself when you say that what Palin says is “not the truth”. Do you mean “not the whole truth”? Well, yes…but again, no politician ever tells the whole truth, so it’s hard to see why we should care too much about that here. If you don’t mean either of these things, then I’ll need you to explain what you mean.
The cases are different in any case. Maybe oral sex is neither clearly sex nor clearly not sex. But Palin engaged in actions that clearly count as `opposing the bridge’. It isn’t clear that she had admirable motives for doing so, but she did engage in “opposing the bridge behaviors”, behaviors that infuriated people who supported the bridge. Of course, she also engaged in actions that clearly count as `supporting the bridge’.
The point is, to say that Palin shot a moose is to say that at some point she engaged in shooting-a-moose activities. It isn’t to say that she always was engaged in such activities, or was even always disposed to engage in them. It isn’t to say anything about her motives for engaging in such activities. Likewise, to say that Palin opposed the bridge is to say that Palin once engaged in opposing-the-bridge activities. And she did in fact engage in such activities. There is just no way around this fact–even though I grant that the statement is significantly misleading.
I don’t understand the desire to paint with such broad strokes here. There is a difference between lying and misleading someone. Politicians and advertisers mislead people constantly. But politicians and advertisers cannot just lie to people. They end up in trouble with the law if they do.
There is also a huge difference, by the way, in context between what counts as “telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth” in a courtroom and what counts as true in a TV ad. What Clinton didn’t do was tell the whole truth. If Clinton went around bragging to his buddies that he was having sex with his intern, then he was lying. Because he wasn’t having sex with her.
When Obama claims that providing Bush-like stimulus checks is a tax cut that is at least misleading at best and a lie at worst. As far as I’m concerned Palin is more honest than anyone else on either ticket. Joe Biden is an admitted plagiarist and so is an admitted liar. How that for character? Obama claims his pastor’s anti american rants didn’t affect him…..bull. Palin enjoys an 80% approval rate among Alaskans. Find me another politician with that number. She must be doing something right. You want honesty? Here it is….Palin has turned this election in favor of the Republicans and Democrats don’t know what to do other than attack her…..and that backfires. I wonder how honest it will be when Obama dumps Biden. Faux health problem? Family emergency? It will be an out and out lie by the party that always lies….the Democrats. By the way, I’m feeling the Dems pain…..and I’m enjoying it.