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One of the irritating realities of modern politics is that in order to criticize your opponent's position on some issue you must first find a way to express that position as a soundbite that you can attack. Obama's opinions tend to fall in two categories: short, pithy, vacuous soundbites that cannot be attacked on substance because they have none; and longer, nuanced, complex arguments that contain such a contradictory maze of bad ideas that they cannot be expressed as a soundbite without giving Obama the perfectly-fair opportunity to claim that the soundbite is nothing he ever said. The "bankrupt the coal industry" meme falls into the second category.<br> <br> While he did say that his energy policies would make the cost of energy go up, he didn't -- exactly -- say that he would bankrupt the coal industry. He was describing his carbon trading ideas to an environmentally-inclined audience and he said that a power company would go bankrupt trying to build a *new* coal-fired plant. The idea is to make it prohibitively expensive for the coal industry to grow -- not necessarily to attack its existing business. The long term effect on the coal industry would be very, very bad -- most innovation comes with growth and a static industry gets left behind -- but, technically, Obama never said he would "bankrupt the coal industry."
By BigLeeH

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