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Want to win $300 million?

James Forsyth

Monday, 23rd June 2008

The McCain campaign’s offer of a $300 million prize for the development of an electric car battery that can surpass the hybrids and electric car currently on the market is smart politics. It is a catchy idea that is going to generate buzz—it has been the lead on Drudge all day—and gives some concreteness to the otherwise rather abstract idea of energy innovation. I also like it because it is a solution to the problem of reducing carbon emissions and moving away from Middle East oil that doesn’t rely on rationing but on technological innovation.

Centre-right politicians everywhere, and certainly the Cameroons in Britain, really could learn from how McCain talks about energy and green issues. He coherently ties together a belief in technological progress, a commitment to growth, an awareness of the environmental impact of fossil fuels and the national security need to end the West’s reliance on oil from the world ‘s most volatile region. This gives him a distinct advantage over Obama whose talk about how Americans need to eat less, drive less and turn down the AC sounds a bit Carterish.

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Old Hack

June 24th, 2008 9:46am

Just imagine the progress we could have made with the money that's been spent on the Iraq war in the last few years.

Ganpat Ram

June 25th, 2008 6:45pm

There is always hope even for the worst sinner, and the article by Dick Morris over on Realclear Politics advising McCain how to puncture Obama proves it.

Refreshing to have Dick Morris talking sane, balanced sense for once.

However, I feel advising McCain is a wasted effort. He is as unperceptive politically as a rock.

I am a Clintonite who will vote McCain, but I have lost hope in his winning.

I have never seen such a slow-witted, unimaginative leading contender for the presidency as McCain, with the possible exception of Bob Dole.

What is crazy is that McCain's chances are actually very good - if only he would grasp them.

Despite the suffocating media sycophancy toward Obama, his being promoted as God walking on earth, the American public, miraculously, still remains grimly skeptical of him. In most polls his lead is narrow.

What McCain desperately needs to do very very very soon is to demand what Obama was doing all those twenty years sitting in a church whose pastor made fascist hate speeches against America- and taking that pastor as his family's spiritual adviser.

This is a frightening detail about Obama - it shows how utterly bogus and unreliable are his claims to patriotism.

But McCain has virtuously ruled out campaigning on that critical issue. Just like Clinton.

He will suffer Clintion's fate.

The people who insanely glorify this slick Chicago huckster will have to suffer the consequences of him in office. In a year they will be utterly disillusioned.

Obama's troubles will begin when he has won, not before.

2012 should be a good year for Al Gore to run for the presidency. America will be so disgusted with both the brainless Republicans and the crooked Obamites !!!

No wonder he is looking pleased with himself these days.