McCain A Friend To Region

This year’s presidential candidates, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama, could not offer two more definitive visions for the people of western Virginia. Obama thinks the only solution for the people of this region is to tax us more because government knows how to help us best and shame us for our traditional way of life.

When Obama comes to town, he pretends to understand the challenges our region faces, but in California, Obama claims that the bitter people living in places like western Virginia “cling to guns and religion” waiting for Washington to swoop in to save them.

McCain understands our independent streak, our desire to make our region better without the interference of government, and that using our resources the people of western Virginia can help lead America – and the world – toward energy independence.

To compare these candidates, consider their approaches on two issues important to us – energy independence and the right to bear arms.

Energy independence affects our national security, and our domestic economic security. The right to bear arms protects personal, inherent Constitutional rights.

Virginians know that seeking domestic energy independence is vital to ending America’s reliance on high-priced foreign energy that threatens our national security.

Instead of using resources that we have at home, right here in Virginia, we are at the mercy of countries that hate America and are left with soaring fuel costs.

Clean, reliable, inexpensive power is essential to everyone’s future and our Virginia coal must continue to be a part of it.

Obama sees Virginia’s coal as an evil to be taxed and squashed. Obama told The San-Antonio News Express on Feb. 19, 2008: “What we ought to do is tax dirty energy, like coal and, to a lesser extent, natural gas.”

In contrast, McCain sees Virginia’s reserves of coal – and human ingenuity – as strategic resources that can lead us all toward cleaner, cheaper energy. McCain said, “Coal is a strategic national resource [that] provides most of our nation’s electricity.”

He noted that “burning coal cleanly is a challenge of practical problem solving and human ingenuity, and we have no shortage of those in this country.”

As a result, McCain proposes to reward and support their efforts to develop clean-coal and carbon-sequestration technologies. McCain knows the world’s developing economies in India and China also depend heavily upon coal: consequently, clean-coal technologies developed here in Virginia could be exported around the globe, potentially adding over 500,000 jobs to the U.S. economy.

Then there is the Second Amendment – our Constitutional right to bear arms.

McCain represents a state where many ranchers still carry sidearms, and he has consistently defended the rights of all American gun owners. Nor need anyone doubt that a moose-hunting mom like Gov. Sarah Palin will defend the Second Amendment in Washington – just as she exercised it in Alaska.

The same cannot be said about Obama.

Now that he is running for president, he tells voters that he supports the right to bear arms. But before his nomination, he reportedly told one scholar, John R. Lott, Jr., “I don’t believe that people should be able to own guns.”

In 1996, Obama answered “yes” to a questionnaire asking if he would support bans on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns. You cannot “bear arms” if you cannot manufacture, sell or possess them.

In short, Obama’s election year enlightenment on gun ownership is such a transparent ruse that it becomes both insulting and revealing.

Only to get elected, Obama happily declared himself a supporter of Second-Amendment rights – even though no reasonable person familiar with his record on guns could possibly believe that.

McCain and Palin trust the people of western Virginia as responsible, independent-thinking adults and they believe in our rights to own guns, mine coal and develop and export clean-coal technologies.
I urge you to vote for John McCain for president and Sarah Palin for vice president.

Jerry Kilgore, a Scott County, Va., native is a co-chair of McCain’s Virginia campaign and a former Virginia attorney general.