COMMENTARY | A pundit might call the series of comments “How To Lose The Florida Primary Without Even Trying.” Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, called the remarks “outrageous.” Florida Congressman Allen West, a Republican, called them a “faux pas.” But no matter what anyone called the verbalization of “Drill, Baby, Drill: Everglades Edition,” it was a statement that one would have thought that Rep. Michele Bachmann would have liked to recall and reformulate.
Instead, and to make matters worse, even after the near universal hue and cry that went up about her support of drilling for oil in the Florida Everglades, the Minnesota congresswoman did not claim misspeaking or apologize, she repeated on CBS’ “Face The Nation” that drilling should be done wherever America found energy resources — as long as it was done responsibly.
“What I said is that we need to open up resources across the United States of America but do it responsibly,” she told CBS News’ Bob Schieffer. “Because we need to make sure that, of course, that we don’t do anything that has degradation for habitat or for drinking water or for air quality. But the good news is we can do this. We have the technology in the United States to responsibly access America’s energy resources.”
When Schieffer pressed, “Even in the Everglades?” Bachmann explained, “Anywhere in the United States, even if it’s Iowa or Minnesota or Washington, D.C. If we can access energy responsibly in a way that does not degrade the environment nor cause problems to humans or to animals or to the environment, then we can access these resources.”
She added: “So, wherever it is, we can access these resources if we do so responsibly.”
Bachmann’s comments to “Face The Nation” were reiterative to comments she made a week before while in Florida. In an interview with WTSP in Tampa, she said, “The United States needs to be less dependent on foreign sources of energy and more dependent upon American resourcefulness. Whether that is in the Everglades, or whether that is in the eastern Gulf region, or whether that’s in North Dakota, we need to go where the energy is. Of course it needs to be done responsibly. If we can’t responsibly access energy in the Everglades then we shouldn’t do it.”
Responsibly, she said. Responsible drilling in southern Florida’s chief water resource and protected natural preserve? Does Rep. Bachmann need a refresher course on what the repercussions would be if an accident should occur?
Bachmann’s problems in Florida began long before she made her Everglades drilling comment. In a state where 17 percent of the population is aged 65 or older (according to U.S. Census figures), her tea party stance of dismantling and/or drastically restructuring Social Security does not set well. Nor does it resonate well with those approaching retirement age.
But Bachmann wants to ax several government agencies. One of those is the Environmental Protection Agency, which she publicly condemns and targets as a jobs-killing regulatory beast created by the government that interferes with the free market. Created under a proposition by President Richard Nixon in 1970, the independent agency was charged with administering laws passed by Congress dealing with human health and the environment.
Among its many offices are the Office of Water and the Office of Chemical Safety & Pollution Prevention. It is the EPA’s duty, carried out via the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, to monitor and ensure that protective regulatory procedures are maintained.
In short, the EPA’s basic duty is to attempt to guarantee that the environment is impacted responsibly for the benefit, safety, and general welfare of the common good.
Responsibly.
It would appear that the three-term Minnesota congresswoman has made a very strong case for the continued existence of — if not the necessity for — an agency she would rather see eradicated.
With numbers slipping in the national polls since Texas Gov. Rick Perry stepped into 2012 GOP presidential nomination race, the House Tea Party Caucus leader may have severely damaged her prospects for even a good showing in the Florida Primary. And given the public backlash against Bachmann’s Everglades drilling suggestion, it would appear that quite a few Floridians will be voting responsibly.