How much would you like to wager that the administration gets zero election credit for killing these rules? What they will get, and what they're already getting (as shown in the AP story below, is a growing perception that President Obama is a weak leader. From AP:
Obama yields on smog rule in face of GOP demands
In a dramatic reversal, President Barack Obama on Friday scrubbed a clean-air regulation that aimed to reduce health-threatening smog, yielding to bitterly protesting businesses and congressional Republicans who complained the rule would kill jobs in America's ailing economy.And the enviros are surprised? The only way your agenda is going to get some respect from this White House is if you handcuff yourself to the White House fence and then interrupt the President's fundraisers, repeatedly. Otherwise, if you're not willing to play hardball, you might as well just close up shop along with every other MIA progressive cause in town.
Withdrawal of the proposed regulation marked the latest in a string of retreats by the president in the face of GOP opposition, and it drew quick criticism from liberals. Environmentalists, a key Obama constituency, accused him of caving to corporate polluters, and the American Lung Association threatened to restart the legal action it had begun against rules proposed by President George W. Bush.
