Like the endorsed Republican MN-01 candidate he has mentored, John Kline has taken up the drill-our-way-out of high gas prices proposal for tapping deposits in ANWR and off-shore. It's a keystone of House Republican energy policy. Never mind that the oil, which won't be available for at least ten years, will be a drop in the global petroleum market's drum if it were tapped.
Touting the idea isn't universally shared by Republicans in Minnesota's congressional delegation. Indeed, Senator Norm Coleman campaigned against drilling in ANWR in 2002 and voted against it several times in the past--indeed, as recently as yesterday. Coleman voted against the "McConnell Amendment," which went down 42-56 in the Senate on Tuesday morning.
The League of Conservation Voters was direct about the McConnell Amendment's defeat:
"The Republican Leadership who sponsored this amendment did something of a public service today: they compiled a list of some of the worst ideas to deal with America's energy future, our economy and the environment and put them all in one place for the Senate to reject by a significant margin," League legislative director Tiernan Sittenfield said.
We're looking forward to the joint campaign appearances and lit drops for Coleman and a couple of Southern Minnesota's Republican congressional candidates. First the Farm Bill, now this.
The larger debate on energy policy will go on. There's much fascinating reading out there. An instance we found this morning is The Reason Behind High Oil Prices, published by those socialists at Business Week.
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