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Monday, May 14, 2007
Thompson ‘Hasn’t Made His Case’ to Conservatives
Mum’s the word on what Fred Thompson said last Saturday to the super-secret Council for National Policy, a consortium of conservative and religious groups who are looking for a Republican candidate to embrace for 2008.
Veteran leader of the political right Richard Viguerie, who was in the audience, allowed afterwards only that the former Tennessee senator “hasn’t made his case” yet to conservatives looking for someone to walk in the shoes of Ronald Reagan.
“Hopefully, Fred Thompson could be that person,” said Viguerie, who has rejected all of the current GOP presidential lineup as unacceptable. “I’m open to Thompson because the choices are not very exciting to conservatives,” he added.
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Energy Action
President Bush huddled in the Oval Office today with several cabinet secretaries and gave them until the end of 2008 to come up with ways to comply with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring the federal government to regulate motor vehicle emissions.
“This is a complex legal and technical matter and it’s going to take time to fully resolve,” Bush said in a Rose Garden announcement.
The Environmental Protection Agency will work with the energy, transportation and agriculture departments to come up with regulations, Bush said.
The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 April decision, scolded the Bush administration’s inaction on global warming and ruled that greenhouse gases - such as carbon dioxide - are air pollutants and are subject to EPA regulation.
Administration officials said no decision has been made on whether the regulations would include increases in the CAFE standards that control vehicle gas mileage.
Democrats were not impressed by the Bush announcement.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. and chairman of the select comittee on energy independence, said. “After six years of hemming and hawing on setting fuel economy standards, the president has suddenly discovered the regulatory powers he has had all along.”
“In effect, the president asked his agency heads to share ideas and come up with a plan that is due three weeks before he leaves office,” Markey said.
EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson says it usually takes 18-24 months to put EPA rules in place. That makes this effort an “expedited” process, he said.
Cheney: On the Record
Vice President Cheney, mindful of his last ill-fated effort to talk to reporters as a “senior administration official,” offered this today - on the record - on Air Force Two en route from the Middle East to the US of A.
“The last time we did one of these, I tried to do it on background but I took a lot of crap for it, frankly,” Cheney said. “So we’ll do this one on the record. That will necessarily involve some limitations in terms of what I can say.”
For the record, Cheney took a lot of crap last time because he clearly identified himself in the transcript of the comments, making it a little silly for the White House to insist on identifying him only as a senior administration official.
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