In her latest attention-grabbing stunt, the Alaska governor takes to the Washington Post op-ed page to trash Obama's cap-and-trade plan:
There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive!
You might think that in the course of attacking Obama's climate-change effort, she herself might say something about whether she believes global warming is a real problem and what other approach we might take towards it. You'd be wrong. Her counter-argument focuses almost entirely on the separate question of "energy independence."
Politically speaking, however, I do think the piece is a good indicator of what the Republican right currently sees, after the economy writ large, as Obama's greatest vulnerability. It's also a signal that Palin means to present herself as a more "serious" policy thinker, although the piece reads mainly like a lot of her old campaign sound bites strung together.
--Michael Crowley