This morning, while doing my daily trolling of news on Al Gore, I came across
this opinion piece in the
Salt Lake Tribune:
Democrats will err if they pick Gore
By Eric Peters
WASHINGTON -- It took three election losses as the Democratic presidential candidate to push William Jennings Bryan onto the Chataqua circuit expounding a version of fundamentalist Christianity that would make Pat Robertson seem as tame as the Archbishop of Canterbury.
It took only one presidential loss - although surely the most controversial one in U.S. history - to send Al Gore onto the true believer's lecture trail spreading the doctrine of catastrophic climate change.
More from Peters:
After taking a brief respite from politics to dabble as a college lecturer, Gore has been touring the national TV and town hall lecture circuit sharing his apocalyptic vision of our future - one that not so coincidentally resembles that in the disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow."
To be sure, he has wandered from his "the sky is falling" litany to denounce the Bush administration for its questionable pursuit of nation-building in the Middle East. But other than to drop real world matters to thwart the evil forces of future global warming, he said little about how he would stymie the here-and-now forces of global terrorism. We also know only what we can assume on how he would address such pressing domestic issues as Social Security, immigration, tax reform and health care.
Still, whatever his current disclaimers, it seems certain he currently is in training for a run at the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 - if only to derail the megastar senator from New York, the more moderate, brighter and harder-working Hillary Clinton. (Emphasis mine)
Before I go further, just who is Eric Peters, you might ask? According to the Tribune, Peters "is a columnist for The Army Times and AOL.online." But a little Googling provides a bit more of a biography:
Eric Peters is a veteran Washington, D.C.-based automotive writer who has written extensively about new cars, the automobile industry and its products. He also enjoys writing about regulatory issues affecting cars and their owners.
Peters has contributed articles to The Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, Human Events, the Free Market and numerous other publications.
A member of the Washington Automotive Press Association (WAPA) and the International Motor Press Association, he has written hundreds of new car and truck reviews during the six years he's been a staff writer at The Times.
An "automotive writer"? And where else has Peters plied his journalistic skills? How about The American Spectator and the National Review Online.
But back to Peter's most recent column:
[Gore] and a number of other old Democratic bulls, including John Kerry and Joe Biden, would like nothing better than to plant some political land mines in the path of Hillary Clinton, the clear front-runner for their party's nomination. Gore's political allies are quietly whispering to key Democrats that Mrs. Clinton can win the primaries, but can't win the general election because of her high negatives.
But many of those negatives are starting to disappear. Hillary has moderated her views substantially since her election to the Senate six years ago - or at least, the expression of those views. She has learned the art of compromise and reached out to her colleagues across the aisle - even earning their praise at times for her hard work and reasonable attitude.
Now, this is in no way yet another "bash Hillary" hit piece. I'm more concerned as to why Peters, who only two years ago, singled out Clinton for trashing in the American Spectator due to her support of tougher seatbelt laws (along with Republican John Warner, who strangely enough, was not the subject of Peter's wrath), has decided she is worthy of such glowing praise. And why does such an overt, oil-loving conservative, suddenly show such interest in Democratic primary politics anyway?
In short, she has become the antithesis of Gore, who has become increasingly bitter and partisan as he pushes his green agenda around the country. Whoever takes the oath of office in January 2009 must be, for the good of the country, a person amenable to reason - and reasonableness. Hillary may be a better alternative of the two.
Gore has shown no capacity for compromise and, indeed, is building his base only on the far left with the help of MoveOn.org and Howard "The Scream" Dean's squadrons of online zealots.
It is he, not Hillary Clinton, who is too far to the left to win the general election.
After reading Peters' April 30th column linked above, "There's no good substitute for oil and gas", I decided to dig a little deeper. That was how I came across this 2003 piece at the National Center for Public Policy Research, entitled "The Car They Want You to Drive", co-authored by none other than president of NCPPR, Amy Ridenour.
Those of you who have followed the tribal fund scam side of the Abramoff scandal may be familiar with Ms. Ridenour. Seems she unwittingly allowed her old friend, Jack Abramoff, to launder a couple million dollars in tribal client money through her organization. Of course, Senate Indians Affairs Committee Chairman John McCain found no reason at all to question Ridenour's honesty, despite the fact that Ridenour also had strong ties to other Abramoff accomplices, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, as they'd all been officers in the College Republicans together, back in the 1980s, and kept "in touch" over the years, particularly with Norquist. Over the years, Norquist has actively promoted the NCPPR, particularly their efforts to undermine government regulation of energy companies.
NCPPR, with financial backing from energy companies, took on the issue of global climate change in 1997, with V.P. David Ridenour's editorial, "Cure to Global Warming Could Be Worse Than the Disease" and the formation of the Kyoto Earth Summit Information Center to oppose US participation in the Kyoto Treaty. In 2002, funded primarily by ExxonMobile, NCPPR launched the Envirotruth website, which lists on its front page, the "Top Climate Change Myths".
From the mid-90s on, open warfare on then VP, and assumed 2000 Presidential contender Al Gore was the moving force behind NCPPR's "environmental" campaign. Ironically, they weren't alone in that regard. As I written on extensively, Norquist and Colorado AG Gale Norton, with help from Republican Congressional leaders Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott and Texas Governor George W. Bush, and funded by oil, gas and mining interests, formed the green-scam organization, the Coalition of Republican Environmental Advocates (later renamed the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy) or CREA, whose apparent sole mission was the undermining of VP Al Gore's environmental credentials. Ironically, beginning in 2001 CREA was also used to launder tribal funds from Abramoff clients, with proceeds used to promote drilling in ANWR.
Eric Peters' ties to Amy Ridenour and the NCPPR, his history of shilling for oil and gas companies and ties to rabidly conservative media outlets should be seen as fair warning that the "exploitive" arm of the Republican Party is very concerned about the possibility of Al Gore running in 2008, just as they were in the late 1990s. I'm not about to try and analyze why Peters' seems so amenable to Hillary over other potential Democratic nominees, including moderates such as Mark Warner and Evan Bayh. But I'm frankly perplexed over the animosity shown towards a man who even yesterday claimed,
"I don't really like politics anymore," Gore said. "I don't think I'm particularly good at it. I used to really enjoy it. I'm not at a stage of my life where I'm going to say, 'Never again under any circumstances would I consider it.' But that's more the internal shifting of gears. It's not an effort to be coy. I'm not planning to make another campaign."
The question we should be asking ourselves is whether it's purely coincidental that such an open campaign against a non-candidate takes off within a month of the previous campaign's architect, one Grover Norquist, returning to King Bush's Court after a year in scandal-induced exile?
X-posted at Wampum