(Photo of Capitol Building from Flickr and photographer Cliff1006.)
As soon as the vote on the American Clean Energy and Security Act was over in the House (likely even before), gleeful Republicans were aiming to pick off some swing seats in next year’s election.
Identifying the bill as a job-killer and “national energy tax,” the Republican National Campaign Committee swung into action last week, running radio ads and sending out robo calls attacking moderate Democratic congressmen who voted for it.
So the 2010 campaign has begun.
But liberals are not far behind as Americans United for Change and a coalition of the Blue Green Alliance, Environmental Defense and America’s Building Trades Unions started robo calls and posting TV ads of their own, thanking the same reps for voting to “create millions of clean energy jobs, not in India or China, but right here in America.” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Chris Van Hollen (Md.) said the Dems are not going to “run away” from the issue, which they think is popular with the public.
Recent polls showed strong support for renewable energy jobs that would lessen dependence on foreign oil – though people weren’t as concerned about greenhouse gases. Hence the strong emphasis on jobs.
One seat that’s in play is in the southern half of New Mexico, a major oil and gas hub. Former Rep. Steve Pearce (R) will try to gain back his seat from Harry Teague (D), who wrested away the traditionally Republican district after Pearce resigned to run for Senate. (Tom Udall beat him by 20%.) GOP ads in New Mexico are claiming the bill would cost the district 3,000 jobs. The Dems are countering by linking Pearce to President Bush and the country’s financial woes.
Others being targeted include Reps. Ben Chandler (Ky.), John Boccieri, Mary Jo Kilroy and Steve Driehaus (Ohio), Mark Schauer (Mich.), Baron Hill (Ind.), Frank Krotovil (Md.), Dan Maffei (NY), Mike Doyle (Pa.) and Tom Perrielo and Rick Boucher (Va.).
Could it be their fast action is really a warning to undecided senators as the focus of cap-and-trade shifts to that chamber?
The GOP has not yet gone after (though conservative commentators have) the 8 Republicans who voted for the bill, which won by just 7 votes. They are Reps. Mark Kirk (Ill.), Mike Castle (Dela.), Mary Bono Mack (Calif.), Dave Reichert (Wash.), John McHugh (N.Y.), and Frank LoBiodo, Leonard Lance and Chris Smith (all N.J.). Most of them no doubt voted as they did because their constituents wanted them to and they hope to keep their seats. In Kirk’s case, he’s being touted as a GOP candidate for Obama’s old senate seat (now being sat in by Roland Burris).
In the end it’s (almost) all about politics. The planet be damned.
(Sources: E&E Daily, E&E PM, Greenwire)
2 comments:
Cynthia sez:
“Identifying the bill as a job-killer and ‘national energy tax,’ the Republican National Campaign Committee swung into action last week”
The RNC is only echoing what Obama himself said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTxGHn4sH4
Talk about an “inconvenient truth”!
Cynthia sez:
“In the end it’s (almost) all about politics. The planet be damned.”
What delicious IRONY!
Cynthia should catch a clue from the late great George Carlin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
Better yet, Cynthia should catch a clue from peer reviewed science and other observational data:
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2009/03/climate-change-101.html
IMO, Cynthia needs an intervention to save her from the single most dangerously destructive religious cult EVER seen in the entire history of the human race:
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2008/11/environmentalism-is-new-religion.html
The Cap and Trade bill which Cynthia longs for is the WORST piece of legislation EVER crafted in the entire history of this country!
The EPA, under the “leadership” of the overtly Socialist “Climate Czar” Carol Browner, has found it necessary to suppress evidence derived from peer reviewed science in the interest of pursuing a purely political (and enormously counterproductive) agenda which flies DIRECTLY in the face of science.
A far more accurate closing for Cynthia’s post would have been:
“In the end, the Cap and Trade bill is all about totalitarian Socialist politics. Science be damned!”
Cynthia,
You indicate that you “teach journalism at Northwestern, including environment reporting and writing”.
I’m curious…
When it comes to so-called “environment reporting”, do you side with the Columbia Journalism Review or the scathing review from the very much Left of center Slate.com?
http://sbvor.blogspot.com/2008/08/propagandists-guarding-gates.html
Is journalism dead -- especially as it relates to “reporting” on climate change? Has so-called “journalism” become just another avenue for Socialist political activism? Or, would so-called “journalism” now be more properly described as pure propaganda on behalf of a totalitarian political religious cult?
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