What’s All This Talk About Captain Trade Being Dead?

The skirmishes between Linda McMahon and Richard Blumenthal over limiting carbon emissions turned into a prolonged firefight Tuesday.  Cap-n-trade (or the National Energy Tax, as the Republicans have come to call it), once part of Democratic orthodoxy, has been a casualty of the shifting political landscape.

It must be getting a reaction in polls.  The McMahon campaign has been emphasizing it in the past several weeks.  The Blumenthal campaign has been trying to avoid it.  That strategy changed Tuesday.  Attorney General Blumenthal has been caught on video by the McMahon campaign dancing around the issue, which is of considerable importance to Democratic activists worried about global warming and the nation’s role in it.

The campaign released a video showing a subdued Mr. Blumenthal on the campaign trail responding to a man asking if he favors cap-n-trade.  No, says the 5 term veteran, and then makes this pronouncement, “Cap-n-trade is dead.”  The McMahon campaign, tightening the noose, released a second video showing another interested person encountering Mr. Blumenthal among the people and asking the same question.  He tells her to call him for an answer.  Where has the real Richard Blumenthal gone?  That’s the sort of question not long ago he would have enjoyed answering, complete with an ode to his own good works.  He would have highlighted the letter that he and a passel of his opinionated brethren sent to Washington supporting cap-n-trade.  He’s a pro at virtue–until it starts to become a vice to the voters.

NBC Connecticut took up the story and found Mr. Blumenthal in a twist over Mrs. McMahon’s advertisements that her opponent’s taste for ol’ Captain Trade will cause Connecticut residents to pay a lot more money for electricity.  The numbers come from a study by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that is not lose with numbers and analysis.  Add to this, the common sense notion that any limit on energy is going to mean it will become more expensive for those who need to use it–which is a class that includes all of us.

Mr. Blumenthal declined to address the underlying environmental, energy, and economic implications of the policy, preferring to go into his dance about standing up to special interests like big oil.  It sounded a bit shopworn.  Mrs. McMahon, who looks pretty comfortable on the offensive, pronounced this one more example of her opponent not telling the truth about his record.  The McMahon campaign posted the Channel 30 report on YouTube.com. You can see it here.

No one would call Mr. Blumenthal’s handling of the issue deft.  The Democrat’s angry reaction to an issue that not long ago was Democratic territory, especially in friendly Connecticut, refutes the spin from a week ago that he’s opened a lead over the wrestling diva of close to 20 points. Also becoming obvious is that the McMahon campaign’s emphasis of an environmental issue into an economic one is working, and Mr. Blumenthal is not pleased.