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Flashback: When Asked If She Supported Capping Carbon, Palin Said, ‘I Do’

Today, soon-to-be former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (R) took to the op-ed pages of the Washington Post to attack the cap-and-trade measure currently before Congress. After taking a subtle dig at “the national media,” Palin called cap-and-trade “an enormous threat to our economy”:

Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:

I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.

Palin then went through the litany of typical right-wing talking points on cap-and-trade, calling it “cap-and-tax” four times, and saying it would eliminate jobs, “kill responsible domestic energy production or clobber every American consumer with higher prices.” (It’s not and it won’t.) However, Palin didn’t offer any solutions to addressing climate change — perhaps because as Steve Benen pointed out, Palin never mentioned the words “global warming,” “climate change,” “carbon,” or “emissions” in her article.

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But one other point Palin omitted was that she once supported cap-and-trade not more than a year ago. During the Vice Presidential candidates debate with then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), Palin was asked if she supported capping emissions:

QWEN IFILL: But I just wanted to ask you, do you support capping carbon emissions?

PALIN: I do. I do.

Watch it:

Palin isn’t the only one on the 2008 Republican presidential ticket to be hit with amnesia on cap-and-trade. After campaigning for climate change legislation, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) recently derided the current measure before Congress as a “cap-and-tax” bill, calling it the “wrong path.”