June 24, 2010 11:53 PM UTC

Hick's Flip-Flop Underscores a Big Credibility Gap

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• by: davidsirota

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

NOTE: We will be discussing this story on the AM760 morning show from 7-10am on Friday. Tune in on your radio dial or on the web at www.am760.net.

This week’s back-and-forth over whether or not gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper (D) yet again insulted the environmental movement is certainly interesting – but let’s make sure it doesn’t hide the blatant credibility-destroying flip-flop that the candidate’s statement this week represents. It is a flip flop that even Hickenlooper’s artful campaign spin doctors cannot easily explain away.

Hickenlooper clearly endorsed an effort to “tweak” the 2007 oil and gas regulations because he said he felt some of them are “onerous.” That is, he endorsed reopening the rules and revising them – more specifically, weakening them. Sure, that’s not as extreme as Scott McInnis’ call to all but repeal them, but it is a clear call to revisit the rules and change them – and that is a huge reversal of his previous position from less than a month ago.

I present to you the Colorado Independent dispatch from May 25, 2010:

“He doesn’t want to open up the rules process again, obviously, and he agrees with where it ended up; he just has a critique of the tenor,” Hickenlooper spokesman George Merritt said, adding the process that began in 2007 was needlessly contentious and didn’t fully provide industry officials with a seat at the table.

The fact that this hideous contradiction simply hasn’t been reported by any major Colorado media outlet is a sad commentary on the state of local political reporting. We’re talking about a major flip flop here on one of the most important issues in our state.

That said, those who follow these issues closely probably noticed the reversal. And considering that, it’s no wonder that Hickenlooper is increasingly seen by many environmental voters as A) more interested in appeasing oil and gas interests than in protecting the environment B) having zero credibility and/or genuine conviction.

No matter where you come down on the particular issue of energy regulation, it should be self-evidently clear that flip flopping poses a very serious political problem for Hickenlooper. Over and over again, voters have shown they will support candidates who seem to have core principles over candidates who are trying to be all things to all people. Hickenlooper a month ago saying he was opposed to renegotiating the rules because he “obviously” agreed with them and then a month later telling oil and gas executives he wants to renegotiate/weaken the rules makes him look like a typical thumb-in-the-wind hack.

The policy problem, of course, is just as disturbing, IMHO (and anti-environment “drill baby drill!” voices will, of course, disagree with me here). At a time when some Coloradoans in energy country can light their tap water on fire and when a neighboring state just saw one of its rivers destroyed by an oil spill, watching Democratic and Republican standard-bearers in Colorado both pledge to weaken basic drilling regulation is frightening.