cap and trade

Now that President Obama's reelection team wants to include coal on the agenda, it's worth remembering that Obama himself warned in 2008 that his policies would bankrupt anyone who started a coal power plant. Here he is in 2008, speaking with the San Francisco Chronicle:

An op-ed in one of President Obama’s hometown papers, the Chicago Sun-Times, highlights the 4,257 new regulations that his administration currently has in the works (219 of which will cost at least $100 million apiece, annually). The op-ed draws particular attention to one specific regulatory effort: the Environmental Protection Agency’s backdoor attempt to impose cap and trade.

"Want to guess which potential Republican candidate looks ready to pass the pH test on [cap and trade]? Mitch Daniels. In early 2009, when the issue was ill-defined, he was already arguing against it. That's a nice arrow in the quiver the next time he's asked about the 'social truce.'"

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There's a longstanding debate over the reasons for the Republican victory in last year's midterm elections. On one side are those who say the great shellacking was inevitable because of America's high unemployment rate. On the other are those who say that the Democratic policy agenda shouldn't be dismissed as an important factor.

The Obama presidency is nearly out of gas. So are the Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. Yet the White House and congressional Democrats aren’t surrendering. They’re still intoxicated with their “historic majorities” and bent on enacting more landmark liberal legislation this year, including cap and trade, a value-added tax (VAT), and who knows what else.

"I go for honorable compromise whenever it can be made. Life itself is but a compromise between death and life, the struggle continuing throughout our whole existence. .  .  . All legislation, all government, all society, is formed upon the principle of mutual concession, politeness, comity, courtesy; upon these, everything is based.”

President Obama's narrow and partisan victory on health care reform caused a time warp. Suddenly, it is early 2009 all over again, with liberals trumpeting Obama as the herald of a new liberal era, with the media and some conservatives cautioning Republicans against opposing the president, and above all the perception that Obama is a strong leader.

Last year the GOP made a bet that these panegyrics were overblown. No House Republican supported the stimulus, just eight voted for cap-and-trade, and none supported the health care bill.

Democrats won congressional campaigns in 2006 and 2008 campaigning as moderates. The party fielded candidates with attractive personal stories who did not stray far from the center. One of those candidates was former Mary Kay cosmetics saleswoman Debbie Halvorson, a freshman elected in 2008 in Illinois's Eleventh Congressional District.

This was no ordinary victory. Illinois 11 is a Republican place. Bush won it in 2000 and 2004. Halvorson's predecessor, Republican Jerry Weller, held the seat since 1994 before retiring in 2008. But the GOP trend did not hold in a Democratic year, with Illinois's own Barack Obama at the top of the ticket. Obama defeated McCain 53 percent to 45 percent. Halvorson defeated her Republican opponent, businessman Marty Ozinga, 58 percent to 34 percent.

Andrew Malcolm writes:

Many political observers are coming to see that the ex-state senator from the South Side is running his federal administration in Washington much the way they run things back home: with a small....

...claque of clout-laden people from the same school who learned their political trade back in the nation's No. 3 city, named for an Indian word for a smelly wild onion.

That style is tough, focused, immune to any distractions but cosmetic niceties. And did we mention tough. A portly, veteran Chicago alderman once confided only about 40% jokingly, that he had taken up jogging to lose weight but quickly gave it up as boring because "you can't knock anyone down." That's politics the Chicago way.

Obama and his top advisers Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, and David Axelrod all hail from the Chicago school. Press secretary Robert Gibbs is an Alabaman who worked for North Carolinian Democrats, but he's adapted to the Chicago method with ease. Together, this band of operatives has not deviated from the themes and goals of Obama's 2008 campaign. They do not admit errors of substance. Faced with a troublesome midterm election, Obama did not search out new figures and guides for his party. He reached back to his 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe.