Instead she started her own indiscretions and ethics violations.

Instead she started her own indiscretions and ethics violations.

First and foremost, Palin's national declaration — even according to your slightly erroneous reporting — that she said “Thanks, but no thanks” to Congress on the Bridge to Nowhere is patently false. A lie. All reality-based reporting has Congress cutting the specific bridge funding, but allowing the dollars to flow to Alaska for whatever purpose they determine. So it was Congress that said “Sorry, but no go!” to Alaska on the bridge earmarks.

It was only after federal funding for the bridge was pulled that Palin, having been elected with a “build the bridge” plank in her platform, then reversed her position when it became obvious that the state would have to provide the funding. (It's also been posited that Palin finally ended the bridge project as a ploy for national attention, dipping of her toes into the national political pool.)

It begins:

Republicans have been touting Sarah Palin's reformist credentials pretty heavily, with her supposed opposition to Alaska's “Bridge to Nowhere” as Exhibit A. But how hard did she really fight against the project? Not very, it seems. Here's what she told the Anchorage Daily News on October 22, 2006, back when she was running for governor (via Nexis):

5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?

Yes. 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.

She was very much for the bridge and insisted that Alaska had to act quickly—the party of Ted Stevens and Don Young might soon lose its majority, after all. By that point, the project was endangered for reasons that had nothing to do with Palin—the “Bridge to Nowhere” had become a national punchline, Congress had stripped away the offending earmark, and future federal funds seemed unlikely. True, after Palin was sworn into office that fall, her first budget didn't contain any money for the bridge. But when the Daily News asked on December 16, 2006, if she now opposed the project, Palin demurred and said she was simply trying to figure out where the bridge fit on the state's list of priorities, given the lack of support from Congress. That is, she was quite gung-ho about squandering federal money, but state money was another matter entirely. Finally, on September 19, 2007, she decided to abandon the bridge altogether with this sorry-sounding statement: …