McCain: On energy, Obama = Bush
Posted: Thursday, August 07, 2008 3:24 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy
LIMA, Ohio -- After an uncharacteristic week free of any town-hall events, McCain held a public question-and-answer session here this afternoon and returned to the stump speech he debuted last week. Most of the speech is spent going through specific key issues in this election and outlining the differences between McCain and his opponent.
Today, the issue that attracted the most applause was energy and offshore drilling, a subject on which McCain has been trading jabs with Obama for more than a week.
"I spoke up against the administration and Congress and Sen. Obama when they gave us an energy bill with more than giveaways to big oil and really no solution to our energy problems," McCain said. "I want to take a minute here on this issue ’cause I think Sen. Obama might be a little bit confused. Yesterday he accused me of having President Bush's policies on energy. That's odd because he voted for the president's energy bill and I voted against it."
This is a topic that the McCain campaign has been pushing back against ever since Obama released a television commercial earlier this week accusing McCain of being the candidate of big oil. One senior advisor questioned why the media had not called Obama out on his support of the so-called 'Bush-Cheney' energy bill, when McCain's opposition was specifically based on the big tax breaks for oil companies.
"It had $2.8 billion in corporate welfare to big oil companies and they're already making record profits as you know," McCain said of the 2005 energy bill. "Sen. Obama voted for that bill, and it's big oil giveaways. I know he hasn't been in the senate that long, but even in the real world, voting for something -- voting for something means your support, and voting against something means you oppose it."
Adding to the ongoing debate over whether inflating the tires on Americans' automobiles is an adequate solution to the country's energy crisis, today McCain said that such an idea did not constitute an energy plan.
"He actually thinks that raising taxes on oil is gonna bring down the price at the pump," McCain said of his opponent. "He's claiming that putting air in your tires is the equivalent, is the equivalent of new offshore drilling. That's not an energy plan my friends. That's a public service announcement."
While energy was clearly important to this northwestern Ohio crowd, one man seemed preoccupied with the veepstakes. The man stood up and said he wanted the race in November to be a "landslide" and he was hoping to vote for a McCain-Rice ticket, referring to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. At that point other members of the audience chimed in as both Joe Lieberman and Mitt Romney's name were yelled from different sides of the crowd.
McCain simply repeated his favorite joke about the role of a running mate saying that a vice president only has two jobs, break a tie in the senate and inquire daily about the health of the president.
