WASHINGTON — Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate who helped popularize “drill, baby, drill” as a slogan, suggested Sunday that President Barack Obama’s campaign ties to the oil industry were impeding cleanup of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs responded that Palin should better inform herself about oil politics and policy.
Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” the former Alaska governor said she remained a “big supporter” of oil drilling but believed “these oil companies have got to be held accountable.”
Pointing to what she termed the White House’s relationship with “the oil companies who have so supported President Obama in his campaign and are supportive of him now,” Palin wondered aloud “if there’s any connection there to President Obama taking so doggone long to get in there, to dive in there and grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Gibbs, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” suggested Palin do some homework.
“I’m almost sure that the oil companies don’t consider the Obama administration a huge ally,” he said. “We proposed a windfall-profits tax when they jacked their oil prices up to charge more for gasoline.”
The oil-and-gas industry donated $2.4 million to Palin’s running mate, Republican John McCain, in the 2008 election cycle, and nearly $900,000 to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The Associated Press
