Sarah Palin continues to lie about her opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere:
Palin refuses to yield on her claim that she opposed the infamous Bridge to Nowhere earmark, despite charges by the Obama campaign that her assertion is a "lie."Once again, Palin told Congress nothing. This isn't "an assertion by the Obama campaign." Palin's claim regarding Congress is factually wrong. As Bob Somerby points out, this is the most compelling part of the lie, because it involves her standing up to an unpopular Congress when in fact she did no such thing. While the idea that Palin "killed the bridge" is a distortion at best, (she kept the money anyway) the idea that she "told Congress thanks, but no thanks," is an outright lie. At this point, it's a war of attrition: The McCain campaign is betting that the press will get tired of reporting that this claim is untrue and simply cease to do so. We should not."I told Congress thanks but no thanks for that Bridge to Nowhere," Palin said Tuesday in Lebanon, Ohio.
CNN notes that Palin is being dishonest here, although they don't use that language. But as Matthew Yglesias points out, "[t]he ultimate test of what matters isn’t one-off articles but campaign narratives," and in past elections, Democrats were tagged as being either dishonest (Gore) or indecisive (Kerry). Given that the McCain campaign has refused to stop repeating its false claims about Palin's record, it would be nice if campaign journalists began to put this approach in the larger context of the election. Attributing the objective truth to the Obama campaign is simply an abdication of journalists' role to tell their readers what can be verified as true and what can't, or what is objectively false and what isn't. Rather than presenting the story as a "he said, she said," journalists should note what is factually true beyond argument: Palin is lying.
--A. Serwer
