I was expecting this silly meme to spread and form new rationalizations. First we have the president sabotaging oil rigs, per Rush Limbaugh — your classic “false flag” nonsense borrowed straight from the world of Infowars and Alex Jones. The only problem is BP, which has not cooperated in the rhetoric and is trying to escape blame by pointing the finger at the subcontractor who owned the rig.
So now you have Heckuva Job Brownie On Cavuto as an “expert” in disasters (!) to claim the White House is just using the incident to oppose offshore oil development. This new line of thought ditches Teh Crazy™, but still flies in the face of facts: the president has put a “temporary hold” on offshore oil fields, but much the chagrin of the left he won’t cancel those plans outright just yet.
So you have the firebaggers saying Obama lurves him some oil at the same time teabaggers say he hates oil. As usual, the truth is in the middle: the president put some limited offshore development plans in his energy policy to draw Blue Dog senators into voting for climate change legislation; if anything, the timing of this accident has proven an embarrassment to the White House with its own base. He may drop development plans after the facts about what went wrong are known, but in doing so he’ll earn little credit from either side.
Yet the BP disaster benefits him somehow. It plays into Obama’s hands in some way. The right-wing punditocracy is sure it’s true because they want it to be true.
