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Palin Tarnishes McCain's Environmental Luster
LA Times. This is most of it.The television ad shows John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, in scenic desert landscapes as he talks about the dangers of global warming. "We have an obligation to future generations to take action and fix it," he says. Striving to appeal to But by naming Sarah Palin as his running mate, McCain has aligned himself with a Republican whose record as governor of Alaska has drawn scorn from environmentalists, most notably for her denial that humans are causing climate change. So that means he's completely changed his spots, swayed by the magnetic appeal of the beauty queen. That, combined with McCain's call for opening new stretches of coastline to oil drilling, risks undercutting his standing on the environment. Global warming has been one of the main issues McCain has used to put distance between himself and his party's tarnished brand. In pursuit of that goal, he and Palin also have cast themselves in recent days as reformers who would shake up Washington. In a time of war and economic troubles, the environment ranks low on the list of voter priorities. But it carries symbolic value and offers McCain a way to suggest that he would break with the unpopular Bush administration. Given the scant contrasts between McCain and President Bush on Iraq and the economy, anything that helps the Arizona senator distinguish himself could prove crucial. "The environment is important to many of the groups of people that McCain has to make some progress with -- especially to many independents," said pollster Andrew Kohut, president of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Doug Holtz-Eakin, a senior McCain policy advisor, said that neither Palin's presence on the ticket nor McCain's shift on oil drilling would harm his standing as a champion of the environment. Environmentalists who criticize McCain "don't represent the entire spectrum" of opinion, he said, and others recognize that coal, nuclear power, gas and oil must be part of any "thoughtful approach" to global warming. The major environmental groups, however, favor Illinois Sen. Barack Obama over McCain. The League of Conservation Voters gives the Democratic presidential nominee a lifetime score of 86% on environmental votes. McCain's score is 24%. That's because The One thinks you should pay more for luxury goods - like gas. Nonetheless, environmentalists have cheered McCain for backing a cap on carbon emissions that contribute to global warming, a position not shared by many in his party. They have also applauded him for opposing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a longtime goal of Bush and other Republicans, including Palin. "To his credit, we've always said that John McCain was better on the environment than George Bush, but that's an incredibly low bar because Bush was the most anti-environment president we've ever seen," said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. Yet he couldn't manage to find any more oil in this country... Posted by: Bobby 2008-09-11 |
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