After a brief step away from George Allen’s campaign
strategy of tying U.S. Senate candidate Tim Kaine to President Obama and his
supposedly failed policies, the Allen campaign has renewed its “linking
strategy” with two new ads released in Southwest Virginia labeling Kaine an
opponent of the coal industry.[1]
In the two new campaign ads launched by the Allen campaign,
the voices of Jay and Elaine Swiney, members of a fourth generation coal mining
family, can be heard blaming the Obama administration for the current decline
of the coal industry in the U.S. said Jay Swiney, “Our current administration
in Washington has put a lot of regulations on the coal industry.”[2]
Indeed, what does the government usually do when a killer is
on the loose? It’s penalizes the individual or group of individuals to make
sure that the actions don’t occur again.
In the case of the coal industry, a repeat offender of
negatively affecting America’s health, the government has applied a slap on the
wrist of the coal industry decade after air-pollution filled decade. That is,
until President Obama came into office, or at least that is the narrative that
is being told by Republicans.
The irony of President Obama’s regulations for carbon
dioxide emissions is that they apply to new, “non-peaking” natural gas power
plants and coal-fired power plants that may be built sometime down the road.[3] Thus, the claim that President Obama is
costing Americans jobs is simply untrue.
An even further irony is Tim Kaine’s own position on coal.
As Kaine pointed out, “I support coal as part of a comprehensive energy
approach that utilizes all our domestic energy resources to propel our economy
and become more energy independent.”[4]
Policy positions don’t get much clearer than that.
But the Allen campaign has used deception throughout this
campaign, so why stop now?
[1] http://politics.blogs.timesdispatch.com/2012/10/09/allen-launches-coal-focused-ads-swva/
[2] http://politics.blogs.timesdispatch.com/2012/10/09/allen-launches-coal-focused-ads-swva/
[3] http://www.forbes.com/sites/powerlunch/2012/08/31/president-obamas-alleged-war-on-coal-climate-change-edition/
[4] http://politics.blogs.timesdispatch.com/2012/10/09/allen-launches-coal-focused-ads-swva/
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