National Review: McCain capitulates on Cap & Trade

National Review's Lawrence Kudlow is reporting that McCain has dropped his cap and trade proposal to control global warming pollution.

Kudlow is waxing poetic - for him it is MISSION ACCOMPLISHED -  he says McCain has erased the last distinction between the McCain plan and  the Bush/Cheney oil company profit bonanzaof the last eight years.

Kudlow says he has assurance of this capitulation on "deep background".

So I picked up the phone and dialed a senior McCain official to make sure these old eyes hadn't missed it. Sure enough, on deep background, this senior McCain advisor told me I was correct: no cap-and-trade. In other words, this central-planning, regulatory, tax-and-spend disaster, which did not appear in Mac's two recent speeches, has been eradicated entirely - even from the detailed policy document that hardly anybody will ever read.

But wait.

McCain's campaign is denying it.

  Jill Hazelbaker, McCain’s communications director, calls the notion that McCain is abandoning or minimizing his support for cap-n-trade "totally false."

   I think I can reconcile the two views: McCain’s talking about jobs this week, not cap-n-trade. When he talks about energy — as he did two weeks ago, he talks about cap-n-trade. Kudlow considers cap-n-trade to be a critical (and negative) part of McCain’s economic policy; McCain considers it part of his energy policy; in campaigns, these type of issues tend to sort themselves into silos, reasonably, and so it ought not surprise anyone that McCain’s focus on jobs and taxes doesn’t tilt too far into energy policy precincts.

It sounds like McCain has two issues that he has trouble keeping straight, or is it two competing ideas that are incompatible, or is it two divisions of his mismanaged campaign?

At least we know its all part of his "Straight Talk" Express!