Palin Was for Cap and Trade Before She Was Against It

Part of the launch for Palin 2012 is letting Sarah take stands and become a national Republican voice on current issues. Today in her Washington Post op-ed she came out against President Obama’s cap and trade program, but it was just last October at the vice presidential debate when Sarah Palin claimed to be for cap and trade.

In the Washington Post, Palin wrote, “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.”

Here is video of Palin supporting cap and trade at the debate from Think Progress

Here is the transcript from the debate:

Ifill: We do need to keep within our two minutes. But I just wanted to ask you, do you support capping carbon emissions?

Palin: I do. I do.

Some of her critics have made the argument that Palin doesn’t know what cap and trade it, but I disagree with this surface assessment. It is more likely that Palin took the first step today in an attempt to stake out a new position in order to make people forget about her previous support of cap and trade.

By the way, today wasn’t the debut of her new cap and trade position. In May she was on the Michael Dukes Show out of Fairbanks, Alaska. On the topic of cap and trade, she said,”Yeah, and I’m not a defeatist. I’m not saying that Alaska’s little voice will not be heard in the debate, but I am saying we have to be pragmatic. We have to be realistic about it, and if this is what is coming from this new administration especially, we have got to be ready for that and we have to do our part to remedy the problems that I believe Cap and Trade are going to cause.”

Gasp, could this mean that Sarah Palin had been laying the groundwork for getting out of Alaska for months? Could it be possible that Palin’s reason for resigning wasn’t true? The Washington Post op-ed is presidential candidate 101. Palin has taken a lot of flak from the right and the left of her Post piece today, but the bigger problem that she will face on numerous issues is her flip-flops. Cap and trade will like be the first of the, for it before she was against it Palin moments.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association