Palin: I'm No Hypocrite

| Mon Mar. 16, 2009 4:43 PM EDT


Hours after the article appeared, Palin's office issued a press release headlined, "Governor Palin Continues Earmark Reform." The main point: since she took office in 2006, Palin has each year requested fewer earmarks and has recently only put in requests for a handful of projects. In other words, it's okay to make some earmark requests, just not a lot.

In addition to quickly putting out that press release, Palin's office went after Jake Tapper, ABC News' White House correspondent, who had blogged about the Mother Jones story.

Palin's communications director, Bill McAllister, contacted Tapper and contended, "The governor never said that earmarks should be abolished or that the State of Alaska wouldn't seek or accept any. Didn't happen. What she said…was that earmark reform was necessary and the state would need to rely less on federal money."

But neither Mother Jones nor Tapper had asserted that Palin had sought the abolition of earmarks. Both stories referred to her speech at the Republican National Convention, when she boasted that she had "championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks, but no thanks,' for that Bridge to Nowhere." (That last claim was repeatedly debunked.) Tapper also noted that Palin, speaking to ABC News' Charlie Gibson, had said, "The abuse of earmarks, it's un-American, it's undemocratic, and it's not going to be accepted in a McCain-Palin administration. Earmark abuse will stop." Also in that interview, Palin added that John McCain was a crusader against earmark abuse, and "that's what I joined him in fighting." (McCain wants to end the practice of earmarking, not reform it.)


