Money Sarah Palin doesn’t want
Why Palin is rejecting some of Alaska's stimulus funds
Sarah Palin has “sold Alaska short," said the Anchorage Daily News in an editorial. The state’s Republican governor has said she’s rejecting any federal stimulus money that isn’t for Medicaid or construction projects. She could have made the same point by surgically cutting out any useless funding with too many strings attached, but she “let a simplistic anti-government attitude cloud her judgment on this one.”
It’s unfair to criticize Palin for sticking to her beliefs, said Shannon Bell in Right Pundits. “Sarah Palin has been a critic of the federal stimulus from the beginning,” and anyone who paid attention while she was the GOP’s vice presidential candidate knows that Palin is merely being faithful to long-held positions, as are other governors who have declined stimulus funds.
Palin certainly accepts financial help when it suits her, said Bonnie Erbe in U.S. News & World Report. If you’re a GOP donor, you might soon receive a request for donations to pay the legal bills that “poor penniless Gov. Palin” ran up fighting the Troopergate probe, which Palin’s supporters say was a partisan attack. Like everything Palin does, her decisions to reject or beg for money are politically motivated.
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