The National Journal reports:
“It’s not just about coal regulations. Barack Obama and Harry Reid have been very clear that coal is first, oil is next,” wrote National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman Brook Hougesen, in an e-mail to National Journal. “They want to empower the EPA to take an even MORE aggressive role than it has today. That means more red tape regulation, more government headaches, more fees, more taxes, and more costs that would cripple entire industries and destroy jobs. A War on Coal is only the first phase of the radical left’s plan. … Men and women like driving their car, watching TV, using their iPhones and iPads, sending e-mails, and using Facebook. They like cooking with a stove instead of over a campfire. They like their homes to be lit by more than a candle. Americans are beginning to realize that the Democrats’ ‘War on Coal’ and ‘War on Oil’ is really a ‘War on Modernity.’ “
The watermelons are opposed to energy and wealth. They believe, a la Puritans and Pharisees and Philistines, that we have too comfortable a lifestyle and we should be glad to have smaller homes, less comfortable temperatures, to move about less, to bathe twice a week in tepid water and to launder our clothes after wearing them for two or three days. To impose this austere vision, the new Puritans are happy to leave the world’s poorest in squalor.
So yes, once the coal industry is properly broken to halter, the other energy sectors follow. The people who said, “Oh, don’t worry about tobacco regulation, these rules will only apply to tobacco” were lying, a la Bloomberg and your plate and your glass. Watermelons and nanny-bullies use the same model for everything: attack a choice that some people don’t like and then use the wedge to attack things people do like.
Mob rule.
Is it possible to force a party to change its name once it has become incorrect and misleading? Democrats? What has democracy got to do with all that?