Brian Beutler adds some reporting depth to the story of how the House GOP decided they’d rather complain about the death of Keystone XL than get the pipeline built:
“It’s a question of whether we’d rather have the pipeline or the issue,” said one of the GOP aides. Black or white. […]
The irony is that the Obama administration has suggested pretty clearly that they would have backed the project several months down the line. They sought the delay for political reasons, but assuming Obama wasn’t dissuaded in the ensuing months, it was just that — a delay. […]
“There are legislative vehicles that will be moving in the weeks and months ahead — and Republican on Capitol Hill will continue to everything we can to make this decision a positive decision for our country,” said House Speaker John Boehner at a Capitol press conference Wednesday afternoon.
Not to say anything personally about the character of the people who made this choice, let me just observe that as America’s political parties have come to be ideologically coherent and relatively well-disciplined that we get more and more of this sort of decision-making. Whether you’re happy this project got killed or not, the dynamic doesn’t bode well for the future.
