The very politician who inspired country songs about drilling for oil is now boasting that her “drill here, drill now” plan for U.S. energy policy would have mitigated or forestalled the oil disaster in the Gulf…if only you redefine what she meant when she said that.
Last night, former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin believed she’d found a way to both absolve her oil-happy politics and blame environmentalists for the spill at the same time, and took to Twitter to rub it in.
“Extreme Greenies:see now why we push”drill,baby,drill”of known reserves&promising finds in safe onshore places like ANWR? Now do you get it?”
Ah, the halcyon days of “drill, baby, drill of known reserves and promising finds in safe onshore places like ANWR.” If only Extreme Greenies understood what she really meant, we could have halted all coastal drilling and just focused on Alaskan reserves.
Of course just two months ago, in a widely circulated missive, Palin attacked President Obama’s plan to open up large swaths of the U.S. coastline to potential drilling for being too little, too late. “[L]et’s not forget,” she wrote, “that while Interior Department bureaucrats continue to hold up actual offshore drilling from taking place, Russia is moving full steam ahead on Arctic drilling, and China, Russia, and Venezuela are buying leases off the coast of Cuba.”
And that’s without even dipping into the treasure trove of statements from her failed ‘08 vice presidential bid.
It’s not a very big surprise that Palin’s doing whatever she can to capitalize politically on…well, anything. And her unwillingness to take questions from the media means she’ll likely never have to answer for this. But the gall on display this time is too rich to ignore.
Brian Beutler
Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.
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