Mark Udall's "bridge to nowhere works fine -- if all the elk know where the crossing is."

What a great one-liner from Bob Schaffer on the campaign trail, as he highlights Mark Udall's low threshold for approving taxpayer-funded earmarks.

The Wall Street Journal's Brendan Miniter explains in his Political Diary:

Washington really is going to the animals. Rep. Mark Udall, a Democrat running for an open Senate seat in Colorado, is coming under fire for a $500,000 earmark to build an animal bridge. The funding would be seed money to construct a $10 million bridge over Interstate 70 so elk and large animals would, in theory, be able to cross the road without impeding traffic.

Miniter calls it a "bridge for nobody," providing a cute anecdote that by itself wouldn't mean much, except for the current mood of voters:

This year members of Congress are finding wasteful spending is a political liability.

That's bad news for Mark Udall. And good news for Bob Schaffer - one of the few true fiscal conservatives to serve in Congress in recent years.