The Denver Post reported last night that Barack Obama’s re-election campaign hired Carrie Doyle, a high powered lobbyist for Colorado’s most outspoken anti-drilling environmental organization, to run his campaign in the nation’s key electoral battleground: Colorado.
From Lynn Bartels’ write up:
Carrie Doyle has overseen or lobbied for various environmental groups, most recently working for the Western Conservation Foundation.
Missing from the Post’s coverage was any mention of the fact that President Barack Obama once railed on John McCain for allowing lobbyists at the seat of power in his campaign. More on that in a second.
See Carrie Doyle’s seven years of lobbyist registrations here.
Among the green groups that Doyle lobbied for — Colorado Conservation Voters, the Colorado chapter of the League of Conservation Voters. That would be the same League of Conservation Voters who most recently won national stardom for pressuring the Obama Administration to reject the Keystone Pipeline.
Wondering whether Obama was going to move to the middle to shore up Colorado’s notoriously independent voters? Wondering whether Obama’s rejection of the Keystone Pipeline was an apparition?
Wonder no more — Obama has hired a green hit man (excuse us, woman) to oversee his campaign in the most hotly contested state in the nation.
Hope and change be damned — Obama is turning the keys over to the most extreme elements of his party, and doing it in the electoral places that matter most.
The pick reinforces that, beyond all the spin, there are two President Obamas — the shining leader on a hill portrayed in his rhetoric, and the cynical Chicago Pol who plays the role of partisan-in-chief with gusto. His hiring of Doyle is one more throw away to the left wing base of his party — the same liberal base that he capitulated to when he killed 20,000 jobs at the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
Obama’s pick of a green lobbyist is news worthy also because Obama famously railed against John McCain for hiring lobbyists himself.
So much for consistency, Mr. President. So much for keeping lobbyists at arms length from your campaign.
With friends like Carrie Doyle in high places, it is clear as day why, under the Obama administration, oil and gas leases are down on federal lands in the West by 44%, permits are down by 39% and wells are down by 39%. It is just as clear why the Keystone Pipeline got snuffed.
As gas prices soar and motorists howl in protest, scrutiny of the Obama record on energy will intensify.
By hiring an anti-drilling lobbyist to run his campaign in arguably the most important state in the union, President Obama just invited a whole lot more.