Reince Preibus
Hot Air Blog
Vice President Biden is in Ohio coal country today.
Yes, the same Biden who said in 2008, “We’re not supporting clean coal,” and “No coal plants here in America!” Who even called coal a threat more dangerous than terrorism.
Coal country isn’t Obama country and for good reason. If Obama and Biden get a second term, anti-coal Cap-and-Trade will be at the top of their 2013 agenda.
So why would the veep venture to a community whose jobs he’d destroy?
Federal Inmate No. 11593-051. Last week in West Virginia, President Obama lost 41 percent of the vote (and 10 counties) in the Democrat primary to Keith Judd, a convicted felon.
And how does a sitting president lose 4 in 10 votes to a prisoner? By attacking a major state industry.
“A lot of folks here have real frustration with this administration’s stance on coal and energy,” the Chairman of West Virginia’s state Democrat Party explained. “They are frustrated and they are upset, and they wanted to send Obama a message.”
This has the Obama camp scared. In November, they have to win Ohio and Pennsylvania. But both states are also home to voters who earn their living from coal.
So Team Obama is scrambling to hide their anti-coal agenda. The campaign website’s “all-of-the-above” energy plan now includes clean coal, which was conspicuously absent until last week. How convenient.
As the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard noted, “Stabbed in the back by coal country in West Virginia…the Obama-Biden campaign has overnight discovered coal.”
But this does nothing to change the Obama-Biden record.
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, said earlier this year, “This EPA is fully engaging in a war on coal, even though this country will continue to rely on coal as an affordable, stable and abundant energy source for decades to come.”
Obama and Biden didn’t care if jobs were lost under their regulations. They are, however, petrified of losing votes.
That brings Biden to Martin’s Ferry, Ohio—right across the border from West Virginia and not far from Pennsylvania.
But Biden’s undergone no coal conversion. He’s there mining votes. The EPA continues pumping out regulation after regulation, and the administration is just as devoted to a cap-and-tax regime as ever.
President Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board in 2008, touting Cap-and-Trade, “If somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them….”
That would be a disaster for Ohio, Pennsylvania, and all of coal country.
America needs an “all of the above” energy policy. But that’s not what President Obama is offering, no matter how his website has been edited.
As Gov. Romney says, President Obama isn’t for all of the above, he’s for “all the sources of energy that come from above the ground…. He just doesn’t like the things that come from below the ground.”
But more than just coal comes from below the ground. Coal brings with it jobs and paychecks and families’ livelihoods.
At a time of high unemployment, when 23 million Americans are struggling to find work, President Obama and his activist EPA would destroy those jobs.
Good luck to Vice President Biden as he tries to explain that.
The RNC also released this video today to remind voters of the disconnect between the White House and coal country:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfIfxmni_Eg
You can read more about this here.
Read more: http://hotair.com/archives/2012/05/17/priebus-anti-coal-biden-mines-for-votes-in-coal-country/