AP Factchecks Palin and the RNC
There were enough whoppers told at the RNC last night that even the AP ran a fact check. Highlights:
- Palin claimed to have championed reform and ended earmark abuses in Alaska. AP points out that "As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation."
- Palin said that Obama has not authored a single piece of legislation at either the state or federal level. But the AP offers a long-winded rebuttal that basically says, "Well, yes, he has."
- Huckabee claimed that Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."
This is one of my favorites. AP responds: "Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries."
- And of course, as I pointed out in an earlier post, Palin baldly repeated the outright lie that she said "Thanks but no thanks" to the so-called Bridge to Nowhere. AP says, in a nutshell, that Palin only begged off her efforts to bring the bridge after it proved unpopular.
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