Beyond the Dome

Lately, Sarah Palin has been taking quite a beating in the press for repeatedly claiming that she told Congress “thanks, but no thanks” to federal funding for the “Bridge to Nowhere,” even though she was all for it during her campaign for Alaska governor in 2006. Now, Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, one of the Senate’s most vocal opponents of earmarks, is rushing to her defense and claiming that she did stop the bridge after all.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning titled “Yes, Palin Did Stop That Bridge” — which he e-mailed to supporters — DeMint acknowledges that Palin wasn’t always an opponent of the bridge. But he still gives her credit for ending it, saying she saw the light and changed her mind.

“Yes, she once supported the project: But after witnessing the problems created by earmarks for her state and for the nation’s budget, she did what others like me have done: She changed her position and saved taxpayers millions,” DeMint wrote. “Even the Alaska Democratic Party credits her with killing the bridge.”

Technically, Palin did make the final move against the bridge. There’s a difference, though, between taking a lonely stand against a popular spending initiative and turning against it when all of the momentum is already gone. My colleague Jonathan Allen does a nice job of walking through the sequence events here.

And when a McCain ad made the same claim — stating flat-out that Palin “stopped the Bridge to Nowhere” — PolitiFact, the fact-checking project run by CQ and the St. Petersburg Times, called it “barely true.”

What Palin actually did, according to PolitiFact, was to perform the “last rites” for a bridge that was already well on its way to being scuttled.

That squares with what Alaska state Sen. Bert Stedman, the Republican co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee, told me last week during an interview about Palin’s dealings with the Legislature. “The whole thing wasn’t going to be built anyway,” Stedman said. The main value of Palin’s last-minute stand against the bridge, he said, was that “it makes for good politics outside the state.”

DeMint also took some swipes against Barack Obama’s record on earmarks, and some of them are clearly supported by the facts.

“When the Senate had its chance to stop the Bridge to Nowhere and transfer the money to Katrina rebuilding, Messrs. Obama and Biden voted for the $223 million earmark,” DeMint wrote. That’s a reference to a 2005 attempt by Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to redirect the money to Katrina recovery. Only 15 senators voted for Coburn’s amendment, and both Obama and Biden opposed it.

DeMint also points out, correctly, that Obama never took much of an interest in cutting down on earmarks until earlier this year, when he co-sponsored a DeMint measure — also backed by John McCain — to impose a one-year moratorium on earmarks.

But DeMint leaves out one story in which Obama took his side on a crucial earmark vote.

During the 2007 debate on the ethics bill, Obama was one of only nine Democrats to vote against an attempt to kill DeMint’s amendment to require greater disclosure of earmarks, such as listing the names of who sponsors them and who receives them. In fact, Obama voted against his Illinois colleague and close friend, Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, who sponsored the motion to kill the DeMint amendment.

“He was actually listening, which doesn’t happen very often around here,” DeMint told me at the time. “Whatever he lacks in experience, he makes up for it in intelligence and thoughtfulness.” Oops.