August 09, 2012 11:39 PM UTC

Local TV Reporter Drills Potential Veep Nominee on Oil Subsidies

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• by: Colorado Pols

The reporting in the last few days from KDVR FOX 31’s Eli Stokols on a tax credit for wind power production considered vital to the preservation of thousands of Colorado jobs, and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s recent call for that tax credit to expire at the end of this year–which has exposed a major ideological vs. pragmatic rift within the Republican Party–has been a model of tenacious journalism of a kind we don’t see enough of anymore.

After cornering Sen. John Thune on Monday on the wind power tax credit (which Thune supports even as he surrogates for Romney), Stokols interviewed Romney campaign headliner (and possible GOP vice presidential nominee) Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio yesterday. Stokols doesn’t take the contradictory rote answers from the GOP on energy subsidies as satisfactory, pressing the issue brilliantly and in a way that Sen. Portman was clearly unprepared for:

Romney came out last week against the renewal of the wind PTC, which would save more than 1,000 Colorado jobs and is supported by eight of nine members of the state’s congressional delegation, including three of four Republicans.

“He will allow the wind credit to expire, end the stimulus boondoggles, and create a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits,” Romney’s Colorado spokeswoman Ciara Matthews said in a statement last week.

In an interview with FOX31 Denver Wednesday following a rally at Denver, Portman responded to a question about his position on the PTC by focusing mostly on the area where he and Romney agree, just as another surrogate, Sen. John Thune, R-SD, did with FOX31 on Monday.

“I agree with Gov. Romney on the fact that we need to move to a market-based system,” Portman said…

Portman’s a bit different than Thune in that he has not advocated for the wind power credit.

However,

When pressed on whether he supports ending subsidies for big oil companies, which receive around $4 billion in federal subsidies a year, Portman responded: “There are different subsidies. [Pols emphasis] There’s the depletion allowance, there’s also a depreciation issue.

“I want to make sure they’re not punished; in other words, they’re treated like other businesses. But there shouldn’t be special subsidies.”

Got that, folks? There shouldn’t be “special” energy subsidies, for any kind of energy, except let’s be careful in the case of big oil companies, because there are “different subsidies,” like something called the “depletion allowance,” which is apparently not in any way “special!”

Suddenly Sen. Portman doesn’t look as principled, does he? Will the thousands of Coloradans who lose their jobs if this credit isn’t renewed by the end of the year, you know, feel “punished?”

Bottom line: possible GOP veep nominee Rob Portman, with a little push from a local TV news reporter, just laid bare a huge contradiction whose smell voters will instantly recognize.

Our question is, why doesn’t this happen in every interview of every candidate?