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发帖数: 29846 | 1 McConnell courts coal country votes
August 7, 2014 - 7:35 PM
By DAVID ESPO, Associated Press
MIDDLESBORO, Ky. (AP) — Campaigning in coal country, Sen. Mitch McConnell
pinned the loss of thousands of Kentucky mining jobs on President Barack
Obama's Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday and said his Democratic
election rival would be a vote to continue them in Congress.
Rarely, if ever, mentioning Alison Lundergan Grimes by name, McConnell
instead said unspecified "people are against the Kentucky way of life and
need to be sent a strong message by the voters in November. ..."
"They question our values. They question our work habits. These people are
not the kind of people we have here in Kentucky," he said.
McConnell is in a close race with Grimes in his drive to win a sixth term.
As the Senate's top Republican, he is also in line to become majority leader
if the party gains a majority this fall.
His two-day bus tour through hilly, gritty eastern Kentucky included stops
in counties that he won in his most recent race in 2008 and in counties he
lost. The region itself is in the midst of a political transition. Once a
stronghold of the United Mineworkers Union, it reliably voted Democrat.
In recent years, though, the union's presence has withered, and Republicans
have fared better in the socially conservative, economically depressed
region.
Obama is particularly unpopular, and the senator criticized him by name
repeatedly. He linked Grimes to the president and his policies, saying, if
elected she "would be a new face that will do what Obama says."
Grimes has consistently denied the charge when it comes to coal, saying
frequently that she opposes the president's approach. In a statement, her
campaign manager, Jonathan Hurst, said McConnell has "a 30-year record of
failing to stand up for our coal miners."
McConnell campaigned before appreciative audiences as his bus made its way
from one small town to another. "Legalize Coal," read T-shirts that were
handed out at one stop.
In addition to the campaign rhetoric, one audience heard from Jimmy Rose, a
native of Kentucky who finished third on "America's Got Talent" and is best
known for the song, "Coal Keeps the Lights On."
He set out one day after former President Bill Clinton campaigned for Grimes
in Hazard, which is located in a county that is losing mining jobs,
according to state figures.
Hoping to discredit the former president, McConnell told each of his
audiences that Obama had renamed the building that houses the EPA in
Washington for the former president. "Do they think we don't know?" he asked.
At another stop, he boasted, "I know how to handle the Clintons." He
recalled that he piled up a 160,000 vote margin in his own re-election race
in 1996, while Clinton carried Kentucky narrowly in winning a second term in
the White House.
State figures show eastern Kentucky has lost about 7,000 jobs in the mining
industry and thousands more in other fields dependent on coal in recent
years. While McConnell asserted that environmental regulations are the cause
, industry officials say the deep economic recession has played a role. Also
factoring in the decline is growing competition from natural gas, which has
come down in price as fracking — the practice of extracting oil and gas
from rock by injecting high-pressure mixtures of water, sand or gravel and
chemicals — has become more widely employed.
Still, the EPA is readying a regulation to curb pollution blowing into
nearby states from power plants and other rules to cut carbon dioxide levels
by 30 percent from 2005 levels at existing plants. Another proposal would
require improvements to cooling towers so they kill less fish and larvae.
McConnell was accompanied by Rep. Hal Rogers, the veteran Republican
congressman who routinely wins re-election by overwhelming margins in the
region.
In his own remarks, Rogers referred frequently to federal funds that he and
McConnell have worked to send back to the state for roads, bridges, tunnels
and other items. "Hundreds of projects," he said at one stop.
It's something of a touchy subject for McConnell, who was well-known earlier
in his career for his ability to secure money for the state's needs. He
faced a challenge for renomination earlier in the year from a rival backed
by the tea party, whose allies in Congress banned earmarks a few years ago. | T*********I
发帖数: 10729 | 2 一定有人说，这是因为巴马是黑人，美国种族歧视，所以批评一个黑人总统。
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