West, Donavon West

One of the Republican talking points is that McCain VP choice Sarah Palin’s opposition to a $223 million “bridge to nowhere” as a prime credential for the vice presidential nomination. "As governor, I've stood up to the old politics-as-usual, to the special interests, to the lobbyists, the big oil companies, and the good-ol'-boy network," she said.

But it turns out that as mayor of Wasilla AK, Palin hired a lobbyist to secure almost $27 million in federal earmarks. Not bad for a town of only 6,700 residents. I don’t think anyone would care that much if it weren’t for the hypocrisy (McCain crusades against earmarks). He introduced Palin as a politician ”with an outstanding reputation for standing up to special interests and entrenched bureaucracies -- someone who has fought against corruption and the failed policies of the past, someone who's stopped government from wasting taxpayers' money.”

Any now it appears as though Palin was for the bridge before she was against it. While campaigning for governor in 2006 Palin ran on a build-the-bridge platform, telling Ketchikan residents (the island where the bridge was to connect) that she felt their pain when politicians called them "nowhere". Oops!

It would appear that because of McCain’s zeal to choose a woman as VP (in order to poach the disenfranchised Hillary supporters), the vetting process on Palin was little more than a couple of Google searches.