Image from American Petroleum Institute issue ad

The Washington Post reported that API spokesman Reid Porter said the ad campaign was “based on public policy currently being debated before the U.S. Senate” and “not related to campaign activities.”

The ads are running in Missouri, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Maine and Nevada from March 24-27. Six of those states will see fiercely-contested Senate races this November. The seventh, North Carolina, will likely see a close Senate race in 2014. The 2012 races are:

– MA: Sen. Scott Brown (R) won a 2010 special election and is seeking a full term
– ME: Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) is retiring, leaving an open seat
– MO: Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) is seeking re-election
– NE: Sen. Dean Heller (R) is seeking a full term
– VA: Sen. Jim Webb (D) is retiring, leaving an open seat
– WV: Sen. Joe Manchin (D) won a 2010 special election and is seeking a full term

Some of the ads mention both of the state’s senators, but others mention only one senator.

In the four states that have an incumbent running for re-election — Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, and West Virginia — the API ads mention that senator alone. And the North Carolina ads mention only Sen. Kay Hagan (D), the incumbent up for re-election in two years. In the two states with an open-seat election — Maine and Virginia — the ads mention both senators.

Sen. Brown’s campaign conceded the ads have an effect on the Massachusetts senate campaign, in his favor. The Massachusetts Republican will make a donation to a charity of his opponent’s choosing, in accordance with an agreement between their two campaigns.

Woah, hold on! Did I say that?

If the Mitt Romney of today debated himself from a few years ago, he would likely call himself a government-loving socialist.

In 2007, as he prepared his national presidential campaign, Romney explicitly supported 50-mile-per-gallon fuel efficiency standards, electric cars, government programs for new automotive technologies, and renewable energy to reduce the global warming “burden” of greenhouse gases:

We have to make our automobiles far more fuel efficient. I’d love to see we’re gonna get up to 50 miles per gallon. The time will come, people will look back and say, “You’re kidding me, cars back then only got 25 miles to the gallon? You’re kidding!” We can do much, much better than that and I believe that one of the ways we do that is having a joint public-private partnership to invest in new technology related to fuel efficiency as well as new sources of energy.

Today, after a few good shakes of his Etch A Sketch, Romney now calls fuel standards “disadvantageous for domestic manufacturers.” He must have forgotten that 90% of auto manufacturers operating in the U.S. — including Ford, GM, Chrysler, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar/Land Rover, Kia, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Toyota and Volvo — all support aggressive fuel economy standards that will bring the nation’s auto fleet to 54.5 mpg by 2025.

A Romney speech released last week illustrates how dramatically the candidate’s stances on energy issues have changed in one election cycle. The audio, purportedly captured at a 2007 town hall event and released by BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, offers a completely different picture of Romney’s energy policies.

(The opening question is a bit garbled, but Romney’s answer is much more clear.)

Here’s a transcript of his comments:

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The political gaffe of the year is now the gift that keeps giving, literally.

On Wednesday, Romney strategist Eric Fehrnstrom was asked about how his boss’s politics might change after he gets the nomination. “I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign,” he said, “Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.”

As the columnist Michael Kinsley’s defined it, “a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.”

How unintentionally powerful was Fehrnstrom’s metaphor? NPR reported this morning:

The high-profile gaffe wasn’t good for Romney.  It was good for Etch A Sketch. Sales increased by 1,500 percent and Ohio Art, the company that owns the toy, saw its stock price nearly double.

So that should put an end to the debate about whether Romney can create jobs or not.

More seriously, I’m interested in the gaffe for two reasons. First, climate and energy are two of the major areas where Romney has shaken his position and started again — see “Another Etch A Sketch Moment: In 2006, Romney Supported High Gasoline Prices To Discourage Consumption.”

Second, my forthcoming book on rhetoric and communications examines effective messaging, political gaffes, and the role of the figures of speech.

It seems clear already that this gaffe will have legs, as they say.  Here’s why:

1. As columnist Chris Cillizza explains, “Gaffes that matter are those that speak to a larger narrative about a candidate or a doubt/worry that voters already have about that particular candidate.” The Etch-a-Sketch gaffe “is likely to linger in the electorate it speaks to a broader storyline already bouncing around the political world: That Romney lacks any core convictions and that he will say and do whatever it takes to win.”
2. This gaffe comes before the nomination fight has been settled, which means it will be used by both sides — Democrats and the conservatives who don’t trust Romney. Indeed, the use of the Etch a Sketch gaffe by Romney’s opponents will make it easier for Obama to use it in the fall.
3. It is a metaphor, and nothing is more powerful in political messaging than a metaphor, good or bad. Artistotle wrote, “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.” Modern cognitive research confirms this: “Studies reveal that virtually all of our abstract conceptualization and reasoning is structured by metaphor.” Few things endure like a metaphor: Churchill’s “iron curtain” metaphor lasted for a half century.
4. Relatedly, it is a visual metaphor that everyone knows. The reason metaphors are so powerful is that they connect something we understand and can describe easily (how an Etch a Sketch works) with something we can’t (how Romney works). If a picture is worth 1000 words, then a good metaphor is worth 2000.
5. Etch a Sketch is itself a figure of speech — a rhyme — which makes it an even more memorable phrase. Rhymes, like the best figures, work because they aid memory. Indeed, the figures of speech were essentially developed by the great bards like Homer precisely because they made it easier for them to remember epic poems and because they stuck in the listener’s ears.
6. You can hold in your hands. It can be used as a prop. Romney’s opponents, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have already done events holding Etch a Sketches.
7. Cartoonists and others can draw something with the Etch a Sketch, giving the gaffe endlessly variety.
8. The company itself, Ohio Art, has a motivation to keep pushing the metaphor to boost sales. Ad exec Jordan Zimmerman says, “It will help resurrect the brand and drive sales. If they are smart, they will parlay this.” And in fact, the Detroit Free Press reports that Ohio Art is already “sending a big box of Etch A Sketches to the presidential campaigns to say thanks for the publicity and a boost in sales.”

On the Chris Matthews Show last night, NBC news political director Chuck Todd said he asked people who were in DC to see the cherry blossoms whether they had heard of the gaffe and, to his surprise, they had. He said, “It’s penetrated the public consciousness because of the symbolism.”

Precisely. This Hall of Fame gaffe will prove far, far harder for the Romney campaign to erase than the Etch a Sketch itself.

Obama expedites southern leg of Keystone pipeline and embraces fossil fuels. Does this make him more or less likely to okay the northern leg post-election?

Once upon a time, Obama said future generations would remember his ascendance as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

In a Cushing, Oklahoma, speech today, Obama made clear future generations would remember him for something quite different:

I’ve come to Cushing, an oil town — (applause) — because producing more oil and gas here at home has been, and will continue to be, a critical part of an all-of-the-above energy strategy.  (Applause.)

Now, under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.  (Applause.)  That’s important to know.  Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states.  We’re opening up more than 75 percent of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high.  We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some.

So we are drilling all over the place — right now….

Obama will, I’ve said, be remembered for a “failed presidency” simply for failing to seriously fight for a climate bill. And this speech certainly guts any possible claim for a climate legacy.

Ironically, as Brad Johnson notes over at TP Green, Cushing is “ground zero for climate disasters in the United States.” In the last five years, “Cushing alone has been hit by disastrous drought, severe summer storms, ice storms, and wildfire.”

Obama will have precisely one more shot to restore his legacy and, more importantly, to give the nation and the world a fighting chance to beat catastrophic climate change — the debt deal that is cut right after the election (see “Bipartisan Support Grows for Carbon Price as Part of Debt Deal“).  In the meantime, all we can do to divine his intentions is to listen to what he tells the American people. It ain’t pretty.

So how do we divine his intentions on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline? Read his lips:

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America produces 200 times as much oil as Germany, but our gas prices rise and fall in tandem (we pay far lower gas taxes). Source:  Energy Information Administration and NY Times.

The public understands Obama isn’t to blame for high gasoline prices, as recent polls make clear. Even the Wall Street Journal and Cato Institute agree: “It’s not Obama’s fault that crude oil prices have increased.”

But as the NY Times pointed out Sunday, facts don’t stop the GOP:

The issue of gas prices has not only been misunderstood but thoroughly distorted by relentless ideological spin from industry and its political allies, mainly Republican. Hardly a day goes by that some industry cheerleader somewhere — be it Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana or Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma — does not flay President Obama for driving up oil prices by denying the industry access to oil and gas deposits and imposing ruinous environmental rules. Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, said last week that Mr. Obama should be held “fully responsible for what the American public is paying for gasoline.”

The Times put together some great charts using EIA data. They make clear 1) oil prices are set on a global market and 2) the strategy of “Drill, Baby, Drill” adopted by the GOP and President Obama has succeeded at increasing production and decreasing dependency on foreign oil — but it has unsurprisingly failed at affecting global markets.

In 2005, oil imports accounted for nearly 60 percent of America’s daily consumption. In 2010, for the first time in recent memory, imports were less than half of consumption, and last year, imports were only 45% — 8.6 million barrels a day of the 19 million consumed. Source: EIA

This is no surprise to anyone who follows oil market analysis. In fact, back in 2009, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s issued a report that examined the difference between full offshore drilling and continued restrictions. In 2020, there is no impact on gasoline prices. In 2030, US gasoline prices would be three cents a gallon lower.  Woohoo!

The bottom line is clear, as the NY Times points out:

With developing countries like China and India demanding more petroleum, prices are likely to stay high. That’s reality — no matter what the Republican spinners say. Only a rounded policy mix of greater fuel efficiency, steady production and the aggressive development of alternative fuels can protect American consumers against what could be even greater price shocks in the years ahead.

Sen. Bingaman (D-NM) made this same point in a major presentation last year: “We become less vulnerable by using less oil.” Grist has a great new chart from Bingaman:

We’re not going to substantially change U.S. gasoline prices through more drilling and more domestic production. We can protect ourselves and our economy from rising prices and oil shocks — and, of course, catastrophic climate change — only by reducing oil consumption.

Most observers would say Ann Coulter is pretty extreme as conservatives go. In the wake of Fukushima, she said radiation is “good for you.” She has said she would tell a gay son that “he was adopted” and then ask him for redecorating tips. She pushes the well-debunked myth Obama attended a radical Islamic madrassa.

So when she says the conservative movement has “a problem with con men and charlatans,” you know things have gotten way out of hand. Yet here she is at a local Republican party dinner in Florida, answering a question about the prospect of a brokered convention:

And just a more corporate problem is I think our party and particularly our movement, the conservative movement, does have more of a problem with con men and charlatans than the Democratic Party….  The incentives seem to be set up to allow people … as long as you have a band of a few million fanatical followers, you can make money….

Watch it:

Barry Bickmore, a geochemistry professor at Brigham Young University, who describes himself as “an active Republican” who “was a County Delegate for the Republican Party” from 2008-2010, agrees with Coulter:

This is nowhere more evident than in the climate policy debate.  The Republican Party is beset by “con men and charlatans” whose specialty is to convince people that there is no climate change problem.  And why do we believe them?  Because for people who think we should try to solve problems with as little government regulation as possible, it’s always easier to deny there is a problem at all….

And so we desperately want to believe that big problems are overblown or nonexistent.  Whenever a group of people “desperately wants to believe” something, there will always be someone willing to tell them what they want to hear, whether the opportunists are charlatans or simply nutjobs.

The question is whether the conservative movement can reject the charlatans and embrace science in time to enable us to prevent catastrophic global warming.

Related Posts:

• Washington Post: “The GOPs climate-change denial may be its most harmful delusion.”
• National Journal: “The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones”