Palin's teleprompter lie

Jake Tapper of ABC News was there at the time.

September 15, 2008 8:42 PM

At a fundraiser in Canton, Ohio, this evening, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had an interesting description of her speech to the Republican convention.

“There Ohio was right out in front, right in front of me," Palin said. "The teleprompter got messed up, I couldn’t follow it, and I just decided I’d just talk to the people in front of me. It was Ohio.”

This struck many of us -- who, as she spoke, followed along with her prepared remarks, and noted how closely she stuck to the script -- as an unusual claim. (Especially those of my colleagues on the convention floor at the time, reading along on the prompter with her, noticing her excellent and disciplined delivery, how she punched words that were underlined and paused where it said "pause," noting that "nuclear" was spelled out for her phonetically.)

Is Sarah Palin so enamored with the audience and the lime light that she is simply compelled to lie?

It's not something she's unaware she is doing. She very carefully avoided telling her lie about refusing the Bridge to Nowhere to her Alaska audiences recently because they knew the story well enough to not be fooled. But she put it right back into her next speeches in the lower 48. Her teleprompter lie is just one more symptom of the dishonest and incompetent package that John McCain has foisted on the Republican Party and is trying to pass off onto the American public.