McCain’s Energy Flaw

01 July 2008 |permalink | email article

Arnold Schwarzenegger, California’s Republican governor, had a puzzling experience on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.”

Tom Brokaw needled him on spending and the economy but a question about the environment seemed to rattle the fiscally conservative supporter of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

The governor defended McCain as “the real deal on the environment” within days of taking a hard shot at the Arizona senator’s call in Santa Barbara for lifting the federal ban on offshore oil drilling.

“I’m proud of him. I’m 100 percent behind him,” he said about McCain who supports the governor on issues like solar energy, greenhouse gases and global warming.

But at a climate change conference only last Friday in Florida Schwarzenegger again criticized McCain’s plan to end the offshore drilling ban.

“Anyone who tells you that this will bring down our gas prices immediately or any time soon is blowing smoke.”

Regardless of Schwarzenegger, whose once popularity has slipped to 40%, McCain’s chance of getting California’s 55 electoral votes are zero.

Quotes of the Day

** “Bill Clinton says Barack Obama must ‘kiss my ass’ for his support.” – London Telegraph UK headline yesterday before Obama called Clinton in what both sides later described as a positive conversation and a pledge by the former president to campaign for the presumptive Democratic nominee.

** “The story of how Al Qaeda…has gained a new haven is in part a story of American accommodation to President Perez Musharraf of Pakistan, whose advisers played down the terrorist threat. It is also the story of how the White House shifted its sights, beginning in 2002, from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq.” – A front page New York Times report on how U.S. policy disputes allowed Osama bin Laden’s terror network to rebuild in Pakistani tribal areas. Will McCain now be forced to defend Bush’s serious Iraq misjudgment?

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