Earmarks, huh, what are they good for? Keeping lawmakers happy...

Imagine for a moment that John McCain wins the election, and imagine that he and Sarah "I love me some earmarks as long as they are going to Alaska" Palin continue running against earmarks. Now, assuming this happened he could legitmately claim a mandate against earmarks. Unfortunately, earmarks are only (barely) one percent of spending so they won't mean anything as far as balancing the budget, which McCain is planning to bust anyway. But they will cause havoc in Congress--probably shutting down Washington and forever alienating the lawmakers McCain will need to "reform" Warshington (as McCain likes to say). In the end this would probably be a good thing since we will need a pissed-off Congress to stop McCain from leading us into endless war. Let's hope he stick to his plans then, I guess.