Obama: McCain-Palin bridge ad ‘continues to repeat the lie’

Using unusually strong language against “The Original Mavericks,” a new McCain-Palin ad that began airing Monday in Colorado and other battleground states, the Obama campaign said a claim that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fought against the Bridge to Nowhere is a lie.

Barack Obama countered with an ad of his own today.

Here’s the ad, which includes the assertion, “She stopped the Bridge to Nowhere,” which has been repeatedly discredited by national media and dissected by The Colorado Independent:

Palin has repeated the claim in her acceptance speech and on the stump since the convention, including at an appearance in Colorado Springs on Saturday — even though she supported the bridge and ridiculed opponents when she ran for governor. By the time she changed her mind, the Bridge had been dead for years. It’s her chief claim to the “maverick” mantle, despite being untrue.

Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton issued this response Monday:

“Despite being discredited over and over again by numerous news organizations, the McCain campaign continues to repeat the lie that Sarah Palin stopped the Bridge to Nowhere. John McCain has voted with George Bush 90% of the time and he and Sarah Palin will continue Bush’s economic policies, his health care policy, his education policy, his energy policy, and his foreign policy. McCain and Palin will say or do anything to make people believe that they will change something besides the person sitting in the Oval Office. That’s the kind of politics people are tired of, and it’s anything but change.”

Barack Obama came out swinging Monday in Flint, Mich. Via Marc Ambinder:

Well, how about Gov. Palin? She’s you know, an up and comer from Alaska. She — they’re starting to run an ad now saying she opposed the bridge to nowhere. Well now, let’s get the facts clear here. When she was mayor, she hired a Washington lobbyist to get earmarks — pork barrel spending — all the things that John McCain says is bad, she lobbied to get! And got a whole lot of it. When it came to the bridge to nowhere, she was for it until everybody started raising a fuss about it and she started running for governor and then suddenly she was against it!

You remember that? For it before you were against it? I mean you can’t just make stuff up. You can’t just recreate yourself. You can’t just reinvent yourself. The American people aren’t stupid.

Will the news media, so quick to take apart Palin’s “maverick” claim after her RNC speech, sit still while the message pounds, 30 seconds at a time, into living rooms across America?

And today, to put an even finer point on the matter, the Obama campaign released an attack ad of its own on the Bridge to Nowhere kerfluffle.

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