Perhaps she thoughtlessly did so to be a cheerleader for McCain, but when Palin took up earmarks as her cause celebre, and when joyfully every Republican incants her "Thanks but no thanks" remark, one can see, retrospectively, the campaign and party preparing to be hoist by their own petard.  All that remains is to light the fuse, so to speak.

Having been called out even by Charlie Gibson, and now everywhere from CNN to "The View," one hears Palin and sycophants like Cantor, when having their noses rubbed in the fact, back-peddling and giving what amounts to a mere description of how the earmark method works.  The clear implication is that earmarks -- if you know how the process works -- are perfectly okie dokie, what's the problem?  Palin, for example, spoke like a provincial porker and not a national candidate inveighing against earmarks when she described how her requests for earmarks arise from local sources and how these earmarks are the way a state taps into federal money.

And she was absolute right.  The problem is, now, rather than just being a liar (she was just a liar when she claimed to have killed the federal earmark for the bridge) she has become a hypocrite, at best.

Her amphibolies of earmarks are these: first, she makes a description of the earmark process substitute for a substantive justification of earmarks.  Second, she tries to make her very marginal criticism of the earmark process substitute for a criticism of the substance of earmarks.  Process in place of substance!

She has yet to be called out on this as far as I know: the media needs to put these two sides of her mouth together: Does she want to get rid of earmarks tout court, or does favor earmarks so long as the process is more transparent?  The scandal of the bridge was not procedural, but substantive; McCain's objection to earmarks is not procedural but substantive.  She's a hypocrite if she claims she's against earmarks but justifies her own earnarks on procedural grounds.

Is this what she means by reforming Washington?  Is this why she's on the ticket? Watch out K Street, Carry Nation is coming!

As for McCain on Palin's amphibolies:  either he knows she's chin deep in earmarks and has no credibility with regard to the bridge to nowhere, in which case he's lying to insist on her being opposed to earmarks, as he did on "The View," or he really believes that what he's saying is true and therefore is really out of touch with reality in a very simple and basic way. 

Wow! It's hard to say which alternative I hope is true.