Matt Yglesias

More Drilly Than The Oil Companies

The two main positive things I’ve heard about Sarah Palin from conservatives, reflecting the current mishmash of contradictions that is the McCain platform, is that like McCain she takes on big oil while also loving oil drilling. What does that mean? Gregg Erickson from the Anchorage Daily News explains:

Silver Spring, Md.: You say she “took on” the oil companies, but that she favors drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. In what ways did she stand up to Big Oil, and in what ways might she be in their pocket?

Gregg Erickson: She is strongly in favor of oil development. She just wants the state to get a bigger share of the profits, and wants the companies to develop their Alaska resources faster than the companies consider profitable or prudent.

Meanwhile, energy issues are the one area of substantial national concern that Palin seems to have some real background in. But my general sense is that when people talk about an “energy issue” or crisis or problem, that they’re not trying to say that current policy doesn’t work well enough for oil producing regions of the world. Maybe I’m wrong.

Battling Big Oil

As John McCain travels to do a gimmicky appearance on a Gulf of Mexico oil rig to argue that oil companies should be given greater freedom to wreak environmental havoc and damage coastal economies in the name of enhanced production, can we recall that it was just two weeks ago that the McCain campaign released an add touting him as the right guy to “battle big oil.”

I understand that McCain’s changed positions on a lot of issues over the past ten years — often twice — but this here is like an insta-contradiction. What’s he going to battle big oil about? Climate and energy really was an issue where McCain had put meaningful distance between himself and GOP orthodoxy as of two or even one years ago, but now he’s completely walked away from that legacy and nobody seems to be asking him what happened to the McCain who used to think reducing carbon emissions was worth battling big oil over.