PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: More on Alaska, from Roll Call:

Leaders of the anti-tax, business-friendly Club for Growth like to demonstrate their independence from the Republican Party. Their recent moves — such as commissioning a new poll that purports to demonstrate the vulnerability of two GOP incumbents in Alaska — suggest they are preparing to poke Republican officials in the eye yet again.

But the conservative group also could stymie Democrats’ hopes of capitalizing on the widening federal probe of political corruption in Alaska that has touched both Sen. Ted Stevens (R) and Rep. Don Young (R).

In a July 18 news release, the club slammed Stevens and Young as “two of the Congress’ most notorious porkers, often threatening other lawmakers while they waste taxpayer dollars.” The release accompanied the results of a voter survey commissioned by the Club for Growth Political Action Committee.

“Like the rest of the country, Alaska taxpayers are fed up with runaway spending, wasteful projects, and the corruption that they can breed,” Club for Growth President Pat Toomey said in the statement. “Defending his pork career in 2001, Stevens told National Public Radio: ‘I am guilty of asking the Senate for pork and proud of the Senate for giving it to me.

“Clearly, the sentiment isn’t shared by Republican primary voters back home,” he said.

The now-infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” championed by Stevens has become the cause célèbre for politicians of all stripes who want Congress to cut back on earmarks.

The Basswood Research poll revealed that 66 percent of GOP voters disapproved of Stevens’ proposal to spend $223 million to build a bridge from Ketchikan to sparsely populated Gravina Island.

The notion that pork is popular with “the folks back home” is a myth. It’s mostly popular with a few fatcats back home. It’s also a major source of corruption.