June 19, 2008

6/19: Deju Vu All Over Again

John McCain's decision to reverse his 2000 position and come out in favor of offshore drilling has produced an oddly familiar reaction in the liberal blogosphere. A similar dynamic manifested itself in early May, when Hillary Clinton called for a temporary suspension of the gas tax. At the time, most liberal bloggers ridiculed the gas tax holiday proposal as a shameless pander that would do little to solve the country's energy problems. Now they're saying the same thing about expanded offshore drilling, arguing that it would do little to lower gas prices (and pointing to the fact that McCain's economic adviser apparently feels the same way). Conservative bloggers, on the other hand, believe that lifting the federal moratorium on offshore drilling is both good policy and smart politics, and they're encouraging McCain to continue pressing this issue.

MCCAIN: He Was Against Drilling Before He Was For It

McCain has been taking a lot of flak from liberal bloggers for reversing his position on offshore drilling (McCain supported the federal moratorium on offshore drilling in 2000; now he opposes it). Yesterday The Huffington Post's Sam Stein argued that McCain's newfound support of offshore drilling is not only a reversal of his 2000 position, but a reversal of his position from three weeks ago:

"How recent a convert is McCain to this position? In late May, during a campaign town hall, McCain was asked about the prospect of coastal drilling. His answer then was far more nebulous and skeptical of the idea compared to his recent, full-throated endorsement. [...]

'[W]ith those resources, which would take years to develop, you would only postpone or temporarily relieve our dependency on fossil fuels,' McCain said when asked about offshore drilling. 'We are going to have to go to alternative energy, and the exploitation of existing reserves of oil, natural gas, even coal, and we can develop clean coal technology, are all great things. But we also have to devote our efforts, in my view, to alternative energy sources, which is the ultimate answer to our long-term energy needs, and we need it sooner rather than later.'

Those remarks differ widely from the sentiment offered by the Senator yesterday, in which he presented coastal drilling as a move that would 'be very helpful in the short term resolving our energy crisis.'"

Stein's post prompted another round of criticism from liberal bloggers:

• MyDD's Josh Orton: "How times change. It's no wonder why no one really thinks of John McCain as a maverick anymore. [...] McCain is desperately, desperately trying to get [Barack] Obama on the defensive about anything, hence this attempt to exploit high gas prices for his own political gain. Although with all those Googles out there, he may not get away with it."
• The Carpetbagger Report's Steve Benen: "McCain disagreed with himself on energy policy just three weeks ago. [...] He emphasized drilling to help us in the 'short term' again this afternoon. He either doesn't realize new coastal drilling (or 'exploitation,' as McCain inexplicably puts it) wouldn't bring added oil to pumps until 2017, or he doesn't realize it and he's just playing voters for fools. In other words, once again, we're left wondering if John McCain is hopelessly confused or shamelessly dishonest. Regrettably, it has to be one or the other."

Meanwhile, Crooks and Liars' SilentPatriot writes: "When the history of the 2008 election is written, the main theme will be the tragic fall of John 'Maverick' McCain who sacrificed every honorable principle he ever had at the altar of rabid and unappreciative Republican base,alienating everyone outside of that shrinking group in the process."

MCCAIN II: Stop This Charade!

Liberal bloggers are criticizing McCain's and President George W. Bush's proposal to lift the federal moratorium on offshore drilling:

• Balloon Juice's John Cole: "[Even] if we start offshore drilling immediately, and I will throw in drilling in ANWR and anywhere else you want to drill, the price of gas is not going to drop to $2.00 a gallon. It just isn't -- oil is a fungible commodity, is restricted by our refining capacity, and so on. [...] This is not to say that I am fundamentally opposed to offshore drilling -- I have repeatedly stated that any rational energy policy needs to look at every available possibility, to include drilling, increased refining, higher CAFE standards [...], targeted tax cuts aimed at spurring technological advances in green technologies, nuclear power, and so forth, but the notion we can drill our way out of our current problem is absurd. As such, it should surprise approximately NO ONE that this will become a key plank in the 2008 Republican election gambit."
• NJ Sen. Robert Menendez slams McCain and Bush's proposals in a Huffington Post diary: "There are so many reasons why the Bush-McCain drilling plan is absurd. There are hometown reasons, like the threat to our beaches. There are national reasons, like the failure to lower gas prices. And there are global reasons, like the future of our planet. In the end, this is a plan that brings relief to oil companies, not American families. John McCain and George Bush just don't seem to get that the future is in a green economy, renewable energy, alternative fuels and energy efficiency, not in oil. But then again, I guess we shouldn't expect anything more from a president who is an oil man and the candidate he supports, who chose to give his big energy and environment speech in Houston, oil capital of the nation."
• dday: "Private corporations have potentially billions of barrels of oil sitting in capped wells and untapped leased fields, some of which have been lying fallow for as much as thirty years. They won't open them because they are more profitable as untapped reserves, which inflates the stock price and goes directly into the execs' wallets. Bush and McCain say they want more drilling, but the oil companies don't. They want more untapped reserves so they can pump up their balance sheets. This is all a game. Bush and McCain want to funnel oil services contracts to corporate boardrooms, not oil to consumers."

MCCAIN III: Willfully Wrong?

Think Progress' Matt Corley notes that even McCain's senior economic adviser admits that new offshore drilling would have no immediate impact on gas prices:

"In a speech that pleased oil executives yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) explained his flip-flop in favor of ending the federal ban on offshore oil drilling by saying he was trying to 'address the concerns of Americans who are struggling right now to pay for gasoline.' But McCain's message was contradicted yesterday by his top economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who told reporters that new offshore drilling wouldn't help lower current gas prices."

• Benen: "If one's guiding principle of governing is 'quick, do something, whether it works or not,' then sure, seeing Republican officials scramble to push coastal and ANWR drilling at least suggests they're making an effort. [...] How foolish has this bizarro-world debate become? John McCain's top policy advisor concedes that drilling wouldn't lower prices, but thinks we should do it anyway."
• TAPPED's Mori Dinauer: "The politics of oil drilling are heating up, but the facts remain pretty clear that little, if any, immediate benefit would flow from such a policy that McCain and president Bush have embraced in order to attack Democrats. Even McCain's economic adviser has admitted as much."

MCCAIN IV: Keep Pressing This Issue!

Conservative bloggers believe that lifting the federal moratorium on offshore drilling is both good policy and smart politics:

• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "It's clear that expanding drilling won't lower prices overnight. But that argument has been used again and again every time someone has had the courage to point out that drilling needs to be expanded and thus, we are where we are. If we had taken action in the past, perhaps we would have been able to bring some downward pressure on prices during the present day. [...] There is nothing we can do now about past mistakes but there is something we can do about ensuring that future mistakes are not made. The fact that good policy coincides with good politics is only an added bonus as far as McCain supporters are concerned."
• NRO's Larry Kudlow: "Warts and all, John McCain's flip-flop on offshore drilling is a very welcome development. When circumstances change, political leaders should change their policies. And $4 at the pump and $140 in the open market is certainly enough changing circumstances to warrant McCain's constructive shift on offshore drilling."
• Power Line's John Hinderaker: "Republicans need to continue pressing the issue now, while the Democrats are in disarray. And that needs to begin at the top. It's good to see John McCain now focusing on the energy issue on a daily basis."
• Townhall's Hugh Hewitt: "Voters understand this issue. They know that scarcity is behind the high prices, not oil company perfidy. Democrats are banking on the voters' collective ignorance of supply and demand, but voters know. The GOP has the perfect opportunity to wage an important battle on a clear ideological divide between the Misery-R-Us Democrats and the belief in markets and the vast potential of American technology. They should do so every day."

OBAMA: You Wanna Talk about 9/11? Well, Let's Talk About 9/11

Liberal bloggers were delighted by Obama's aggressive response to the McCain camp's attacks on his counterterrorism policies, in which the Dem nominee made the following statement:

"I refuse to be lectured on national security by people who are responsible for the most disastrous set of foreign policy decisions in the recent history of the United States. The other side likes to use 9/11 as a political bludgeon. Well, let's talk about 9/11.

The people who were responsible for murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11 have not been brought to justice. They are Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and their sponsors -- the Taliban. They were in Afghanistan. And yet George Bush and John McCain decided in 2002 that we should take our eye off of Afghanistan so that we could invade and occupy a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. [...] Here are the results of their policy. Osama bin Laden and his top leadership – the people who murdered 3000 Americans – have a safe-haven in northwest Pakistan, where they operate with such freedom of action that they can still put out hate-filled audiotapes to the outside world. That’s the result of the Bush-McCain approach to the war on terrorism."

• TPM's Greg Sargent: "The key line [in Obama's statement] is 'let's talk about 9/11.' Keep in mind that this latest GOP assault is not so much about the substance of the argument as it is about trying to project a sense that the McCain campaign is the one on offense. Obama isn't playing along. Only two years ago, some Dems were still saying, 'please, please, PLEASE, let's NOT talk about 9/11.' Now Obama is inviting an argument about it -- and more important, he's saying it's an argument he will win. That's the key here."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "Gotta love it. With statements like this Obama is sending several important messages: 1. he won't be swiftboated; 2. if you attack him, he'll go on offense right back against you; and 3. he's not like those other Democrats who shirked from a debate about 9/11 and national security."
• Oliver Willis: "The last 7 years have been about Republicans pounding their chests about 9/11 and Democrats doing their best to talk about everything else, feeling safe in the cocoon of kitchen table issues. In the vital debate over national security, Democrats simply haven’t been showing up. Barack Obama is doing more than showing up."

OBAMA II: Let's Not Make Bin Laden A Martyr

Conservative bloggers are criticizing Obama's remarks about Osama Bin Laden:

"'First of all, I think there is an executive order out on Osama bin Laden's head,' the Illinois senator said at a news conference. 'And if I'm president, and we have the opportunity to capture him, we may not be able to capture him alive.' [...]

Obama said he wouldn't discuss what approach he would take to bring bin Laden to justice if he were apprehended. But he said the Nuremberg trials for the prosecution of Nazi leaders are an inspiration because the victors acted to advance universal principles and set a tone for the creation of an international order.

'What would be important would be for us to do it in a way that allows the entire world to understand the murderous acts that he's engaged in and not to make him into a martyr, and to assure that the United States government is abiding by basic conventions that would strengthen our hand in the broader battle against terrorism,' Obama said."

• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "There's nothing more overhyped that this, 'Don't make them a martyr' crap. History as a whole and the war on terror in particular have shown us that it's much more likely that your enemies will be discouraged by the death of an important leader than motivated by it. [...] The whole idea that it would be terrible if we couldn't capture Bin Laden alive and give him a trial is ludicrous. In fact, we would be much better off killing him so that there's no chance that a slick liberal lawyer or a pompous liberal judge will find a way to get him set free."
• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "Here are two questions for Barack: (1) If he were elected, would be amend the 'executive order out on Osama bin Laden's head' so that the terrorist could only be captured, and not killed? (2) Does Barack -- as Howard Dean did -- believe that bin Laden should be presumed innocent until proven guilty? Oh, and here's one more: How scary is it that we even have to ask about these things?"
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Is the world truly worried [that] the U.S. might not 'abide by basic conventions' if it captures Osama bin Laden? How many Americans would object to the waterboarding of Osama bin Laden? If the moment he was brought to a U.S. base, a U.S. soldier -- or better yet, the President of the United States -- walked up to bin Laden and raised a gun and executed him right then and there, would the world complain about the lack of a trial? How many Americans would complain?"

OBAMA III: Color Us Unimpressed

Liberal bloggers aren't very excited about the members of Obama's "National Security Working Group":

• Ezra Klein: "The Obama campaign released the lineup of their 'National Security Working Group' today, and it's not an incredibly exciting group of people. [...] Notable absences include [Zbigniew] Brzezinski, Samantha Power, Rob Malley, Ben Rhodes, Lee Hamilton, and others who existed on the interesting left edge of the Obama foreign policy universe. These working groups aren't necessarily that important, and it's not hard to figure out why the Obama campaign didn't want to explain Malley's inclusion to hardline Jewish groups, but it's disappointing. Nothing personal, but Madeleine Albright is not 'change we can believe in.' Welcome to the general, I guess."
• Digby: "I'm not sure what to make of this list. I assume that most of it is to let the military and foreign policy establishment know that he isn't going to be employing kids from his Facebook list to run American foreign policy. (Hey, don't laugh. Bush hired interns from the Heritage Foundation to build a new nation in Iraq. It happens.) But [David] Boren and [Sam] Nunn? Really? Did they have to go that far? Those two are the Bobsy twins of back stabbing. There's a lot of ego on that list, but these two really believe the world missed out when it failed to make them Emperor. Let's hope neither of them gets it in his head, as they are wont to do, to put the new president in his place by running to their friends in the press and publicly disagreeing with him in the middle of delicate negotiations. They're older now. Maybe they're wiser too."
• The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias is happy about one of the omissions: "When you think about the national security working group that Barack Obama announced today, the most noteworthy names may not be the ones left off the list. Consider Richard Holbrooke, U.N. Ambassador at the end of the [Bill] Clinton administration, 'national security Democrat', and top candidate to be Secretary of State in a [John] Kerry administration. [...] He seems like a noteworthy omission from any effort to gather the great and the good of Democratic foreign policy, not that I'll miss him."

OBAMA IV: Weak Sauce

Conservative bloggers are also criticizing Obama's "National Security Working Group", as well as his national security qualifications more generally:

• AmSpec Blog's Robert Stacy McCain: "When President Bush leaves the White House, Republicans will have held the presidency 28 of the past 40 years. This means that, when Democrats start scouting around for executive branch talent, they must draw from a relatively smaller group of potential personnel. Thus, when Team Obama announced its 'National Security Working Group,' one conservative blogger immediately noted that the list of names was studded with 'Carter & Clinton retreads,' a prospect that is 'Not so Changey.' It will be hard for Obama to argue that his administration will be offer anything other than a return to Clinton-era personnel and policies in foreign affairs and national security. The Democrats seem to believe that voters weary of Bush and Iraq may want just such a reversion."
• Hinderaker: "There are some good people among the thirteen -- Sam Nunn, notably -- but it is heavy on Clinton administration retreads and people with no foreign policy expertise at all, as far as I know, like Eric Holder. [...] It's going to take more than a photo-op with the likes of Madeline Albright, a handful of retired military officers and seventeen flags to make Obama into a credible leader on foreign policy."
• Hewitt: "Barack Obama's key vulnerability is not Obama's penchant for making up facts and mangling history or his de-industrialization-as-an-answer-to-soaring-gas-prices. It is the fact that Barack Obama isn't ready to be a junior advisor on national security to a president much less president."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: An Ominous Sign For McCain?

AmSpec Blog's Philip Klein:

"I have a column up on today's page warning about how Barack Obama is the post-post-9/11 candidate who wants the nation to return to thinking that terrorism is not a major threat. But another aspect that jumped out at me from reading the Quinnipiac poll is that this may very well be a good thing for Obama, because his attitude seems to reflect the mood of the nation.

Let's take Florida for example. In 2004, 24 percent of the state's voters identified terrorism as the most important issue in the election, and they voted 87-12 for Bush. Only 16 percent named economy/jobs, and they voted overwhelmingly for Kerry. In today's Quinnipiac poll, only 9 percent of Floridians identified terrorism as an important issue, compared to 53 percent who identified the economy."

LEST WE FORGET: Don't Like The Rumors Being Spread About You? Start Your Own!

Slate's Christopher Beam (h/t Atrios):

"The Barack Obama presidential campaign introduced a new site last week, FightTheSmears.com, that it hopes will debunk persistent myths about the senator: that he's a Muslim, that he won't say the Pledge of Allegiance, etc. As we have argued before, restating the myths often reinforces them, no matter how persuasively they've been refuted. Rather than restate untruths about Obama, the campaign would do better to start some rumors of its own. Here's a template e-mail the Obama campaign might consider disseminating:

From: [Redacted]

To: [Redacted]

Subject: WHO IS BARACK OBAMA?

There are many things people do not know about BARACK OBAMA. It is every American's duty to read this message and pass it along to all of their friends and loved ones.

• Barack Obama wears a FLAG PIN at all times. Even in the shower.
• A tape exists of Michelle Obama saying the PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE at a conference on PATRIOTISM.
• Every weekend, Barack and Michelle take their daughters HUNTING.
• Barack Obama is a PATRIOTIC AMERICAN. He has one HAND over his HEART at all times. He occasionally switches when one arm gets tired, which is almost never because he is STRONG.
• Barack Obama has the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE tattooed on his stomach. It's upside-down, so he can read it while doing sit-ups.
• There's only one artist on Barack Obama's iPod: FRANCIS SCOTT KEY.
• Barack Obama is a DEVOUT CHRISTIAN. His favorite book is the BIBLE, which he has memorized. His name means HE WHO LOVES JESUS in the ancient language of Aramaic. He is PROUD that Jesus was an American.

Posted by Ian Faerstein at June 19, 2008 01:11 PM