Hat tip to TPM.
According to a story in the LA Times, John McCain had a problem with the bacon that Sarah Palin was bringing home to her town of Wasilla as Mayor.
Three times in recent years, McCain's catalogs of "objectionable" spending have included earmarks for this small Alaska town, requested by its mayor at the time -- Sarah Palin.
Ooops. Once again it looks as if the McCain campaign's rushed vetting process was conducted with a sieve. With plans to roll her out as a government reformer, did they bother to check their boss' own records to see if there was a conflict? It took the LA Times what, five days?
In 2001, McCain's list of spending that had been approved without the normal budget scrutiny included a $500,000 earmark for a public transportation project in Wasilla. The Arizona senator targeted $1 million in a 2002 spending bill for an emergency communications center in town -- one that local law enforcement has said is redundant and creates confusion.
McCain also criticized $450,000 set aside for an agricultural processing facility in Wasilla that was requested during Palin's tenure as mayor and cleared Congress soon after she left office in 2002.
In an attempt to close the barn door after the horse has left, the McCain camp says that while it's true that Palin requested millions in earmarks for her small town, well, she really, really didn't want to. Not so says the LA Times.
Taylor Griffin, a McCain campaign spokesman, said that when Palin became mayor in 1996, "she faced a system that was broken. Small towns like Wasilla in Alaska depended on earmarks to take care of basic needs. . . . That was something that Gov. Palin was alarmed about and was one of the formative experiences that led her toward the reform-oriented stance that she has taken as her career has progressed."
Palin, he said, was "disgusted" that small towns like hers were dependent on earmarks.
Public records paint a different picture:
Wasilla had received few if any earmarks before Palin became mayor. She actively sought federal funds -- a campaign that began to pay off only after she hired a lobbyist with close ties to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who long controlled federal spending as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He made funneling money to Alaska his hallmark.
Lie after lie after lie after lie. It's becoming pretty obvious that Sarah Palin looks a lot more like George Bush's soul mate than John McCain's.
Update: Thanks to rubegreenhorn for the suggestion. You can Digg the LA Times story here