Karl Rove, former Deputy White House Chief of Staff and current Fox News and Wall St. Journal contributor, said earlier this week that he regrets his previous endorsement of Alabama Public Service Commissioner Terry Dunn.
“I regret it because I’m concerned about the relationships he’s building with out-of-the-mainstream, anti-coal environmental groups,” Rove told Yellowhammer. Rove endorsed Dunn’s candidacy when he first ran for Public Service Commission in 2010, but said he hopes Alabamians take the opportunity to make a change in 2014 when Dunn is up for re-election.
Dunn declined to comment when he learned of Rove’s statement.
Rove was in Tuscaloosa as the keynote speaker at the local Republican Party’s annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner.
During his public remarks, Rove also cited the Environmental Protection Agency’s overreaching regulations as one of the primary reasons America’s economy is experiencing its most sluggish recovery ever.
“I used to say it was the worst recovery since World War II, until my friend, Dr. Ed Lazear, out of Stanford said, ‘no, you’re wrong, it’s the worst recovery in the recorded economic history of the United States,'” Rove recalled. “At the current rate, it will take us 10 more months to even get back to the same number of people working in America that we had in December of 2007 when the recession began.”
Rove said elected officials on both sides of the aisle should come together to support the use of America’s vast domestic energy resources. However, he believes the Obama Administration has instead used the federal government’s regulatory power to attack the fossil fuels industry while doling out billions of dollars to so-called green energy companies, which they favor.
“We need to have an American energy policy that means we produce more energy here in the country, and we don’t use the government’s power to discourage the use of resources that you have in abundance like coal and coal methane,” Rove said. “We need to have sensible regulation where the question we ask is, is the cost of this regulation offset by a dramatically better benefit from it.”
Follow Cliff on Twitter @Cliff_Sims
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