For green groups, President Barack Obama?s retreat on ozone standards is?another reason to question how aggressively they want to support his reelection in 2012.
Even more bruising: The realization that they may not have much choice.
Continue Reading?We have no place else left to go but home,? said one official at a major environmental group, speaking on background Friday. ?So the enviros come out looking weak once again because of today and we?re all screaming bloody murder.
?But you know what,? the official said. ?At the end of the day, I don?t think the White House is unhappy to hear us complain.?
That could be a dangerous assumption for the administration to make, warned activist Ralph Nader, the former Green Party candidate who siphoned off enough votes in 2000 to deny the White House to Al Gore.
?I know [Obama] thinks all these people voted for him and they have nowhere to go in 2012 because the Republicans are worse,? said Nader, speaking during yet another day of White House protests against a proposed tar-sands-oil pipeline from Canada. ?But they can stay home.
They can closet their enthusiasm. They can end their contributions to him. And that?s not what he needs to be reelected.?
A similar warning came from MoveOn Executive Director Justin Ruben, calling the ozone decision just the latest in a series of disappointments.
?Many MoveOn members are wondering today how they can ever work for President Obama's reelection, or make the case for him to their neighbors, when he does something like this, after extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and giving in to tea party demands on the debt deal,? Ruben said in a statement. ?This is a decision we'd expect from George W. Bush.?
The White House insisted that electoral considerations had nothing to do with Obama?s announcement ? on the eve of the Labor Day weekend ? that the administration is withdrawing efforts to tighten EPA?s rule on ozone until the 2013 cycle.
?This has nothing to do with politics, nothing at all,? one White House official said to reporters on a conference call following the announcement.
Still, the move earned raves from Republicans and industry groups that have mounted fierce attacks on the president?s regulatory agenda ? though they also served notice that they plan to continue trying to upend a host of other EPA regulations.
Friday?s decision unquestionably provides Obama with breathing room by punting on perhaps the most controversial of all the pending EPA rules. It also came on a day when the new jobs numbers underscored the fact that voters will head to the ballot box next November with the unemployment rate at a dangerously high level for Obama?s prospects.
On the other hand, the decision further sours the mood of green activists at the center of Obama?s liberal base. They were already disenchanted with the administration?s failure to enact major climate legislation, its consideration of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, and other issues.
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