Sarah Palin tells everyone in her convention speech and everywhere she goes about how she fought against the bridge to nowhere as governor of Alaska.
She was for it. She accepted the money for it. When public attention was drawn to it, she came out against it to save face. However, as governor, she chose to keep the money for the bridge to nowhere.
Wikipedia - In October 2005, Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska became the object of strong media criticism when he opposed diverting the Gravina and Knik Arm Bridge funds to help aid recovery from Hurricane Katrina.[8] In his speech on the Senate floor, Stevens threatened to quit Congress if the funds were removed from his state.
In 2005, Congress stripped the specific earmark allocation of federal funds for the two bridges, without changing the amount of money allocated for use by Alaska.
“In September, 2006,Sarah Palin showed up in Ketchikan on her gubernatorial campaign and said the bridge was essential for the town’s prosperity.” In August 2007, Alaska’s Department of Transportation stated that it was “leaning” toward alternative ferry options, citing bridge costs, despite having already received the funds from the federal government.
The project was canceled in 2007 by bridge supporter Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who changed her view after Congress forced the funds to be used elsewhere. She said, “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.”
Yet, now she says she fought the republican party and the powers that be and the good ole boy network by being against the bridge to nowhere all along. She says she told the federal government, “Thank you, but no thank you.”
NYTimes - 11-17-05
Straining to show new dedication to lower spending, House and Senate negotiators took the rare step of eliminating a requirement that $442 million be spent to build the two bridges, spans that became cemented in the national consciousness as “bridges to nowhere” because of the remote territory and small populations involved.
The change will not save the federal government any money. Instead, the $442 million will be turned over to the state with no strings attached, allowing lawmakers and the governor there to parcel it out for transportation projects as they see fit, including the bridges should they so choose.
Lawmakers said widespread news coverage had turned the bridges, near Ketchikan and Anchorage, into symbols of Congressional excess. Some members of Congress said they got more questions at town meetings about the bridges than about the new Medicare drug program. A Republican pollster warned that the projects were a political albatross.
Sarah Palin didn’t say no thank you to the money as governor of Alaska. She just got it with no strings attached rather than have it slated just for bridges.
Comment from the same article; “We ought to do away with $24 billion worth, not just one bridge,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.
Hmmm, John, have you and Sarah Palin actually talked to each other yet? Have you been introduced?
From the Anchorage News 8-31-08, a newspaper in Sarah Palin’s home state of Alaska
“I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere,” Palin told the cheering McCain crowd, referring to Ketchikan’s Gravina Island bridge. But Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it.
Meanwhile, Weinstein noted, the state is continuing to build a road on Gravina Island to an empty beach where the bridge would have gone — because federal money for the access road, unlike the bridge money, would have otherwise been returned to the federal government.
In September, 2006, Palin showed up in Ketchikan on her gubernatorial campaign and said the bridge was essential for the town’s prosperity. “OK, you’ve got Valley trash standing here in the middle of nowhere,” Palin said, according to an account in the Ketchikan Daily News. “I think we’re going to make a good team as we progress that bridge project.” One year later, Ketchikan’s Republican leaders said they were blindsided by Palin’s decision to pull the plug.
Andrew Halcro, who ran against Palin in 2006, told The Associated Press on Saturday that Palin changed her views after she was elected to make a national splash. Mayor Weinstein said many residents remain irked by Palin’s failure to come to Ketchikan since that time to defend her decision — despite promises that she would.
Businessman Mike Elerding, who helped run Palin’s local campaign for governor, told the paper he would have a hard time voting for the McCain ticket because of Palin’s subsequent neglect of Ketchikan and her flip-flop on the “Ralph Bartholomew Veterans Memorial Bridge.”
I find it funny that she is still building a road to nowhere since the bridge to nowhere didn’t work out. McCain and Palin both say she was against the bridge to nowhere to prove she makes tough decisions and that she is a budget cutter.
The truth is she did not oppose the bridge to nowhere until after the public got wind of the pork barrel project.
