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July 10, 2010 07:14 PM UTC

Jane Norton: Drill Baby Drill, Dictators Bad...Oops!

  • 13 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

First, the good news: visitors to the homepage of GOP Senate candidate Jane Norton are no longer visually assaulted with her “war on Islam” web video and “stand with me against the liberals and terrorists” petition. You can still get to it, scroll to the bottom and click the little GI Joe helmet.

As of yesterday, Norton’s homepage sports a new theme:

And as before, here’s the video accompanying the new homepage:

You’ll be relieved to see that no major world religions were insulted in the making of this video. No, Norton is making a pretty standard claim from Republicans, one not entirely without merit although you have to wonder if the Gulf oil spill makes “Drill the Roan and ANWR” a bit of a sour prescription–and hell, even “Big Oil Bob” Schaffer at least had a token bullet point for wind power. Still, it’s not false for Norton to say that domestic energy reduces our dependency on various nasty despots around the world. In this ad, Norton highlights Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia.

Wait a minute. Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal…of Saudi Arabia?

Only occasionally in this campaign has the role of Norton’s brother-in-law, legendary D.C. lobbyist Charlie Black come up. The Colorado Statesman asked about Black in a recent interview:

CS: What has been the role of Charlie Black in your campaign?

JN: He’s been my brother-in-law (laughs).

CS: Right, and in terms of the campaign, what is his involvement?

JN: Oh, I called him from time to time and asked for advice.

CS: Does he still provide ongoing advice to you?

JN: Sure.

It would be interesting to know whether or not Norton ran this “foreign dictators bad” campaign theme by Charlie Black. It’s possible that going down this road might make him a little uncomfortable–just to refresh everyone’s memory, the New York Times reported in 2008:

A courtly Southerner, Mr. Black is an unflappable spinner, responding in the heat or silliness of a campaign with the well-modulated tone of a man who cannot believe that not everyone would see his position as the only reasonable one.

Blackwater, he says over steak salad at the Morton’s off the K Street lobbying corridor, “is a fine company that’s provided a great service to the people of the United States and Iraq.” Saudi Arabia, another client: “a great ally.” [Pols emphasis] Mr. Savimbi, the brutal Angolan leader whom President Ronald Reagan promoted as a freedom fighter but many Democrats derided as an ally of apartheid South Africa: “a great pleasure to work with.”

So while you’re waiting for a reporter to ask Norton whether she’s entirely comfortable with bashing one of her brother-in-laws’ clients (don’t hold your breath), here’s another twist–from the Huffington Post, also in 2008 while Black was working for John McCain’s presidential campaign:

In the summer of 2005…Charlie Black, working for his firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey, was paid $60,000 to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of the Chinese oil conglomerate CNOOC. At the time, CNOOC was mounting an aggressive bid to buy Unocal, a California-based oil giant, and Black was tasked with churning up congressional support. But the bid ultimately fell through, in part because of objections over the China oil industry’s ties to Iran… [Pols emphasis]

For those of you keeping score, that’s Jane Norton’s brother-in-law Charlie Black, who lobbied for one of the bad guys in this ad, Saudi Arabia, and lobbied for a foreign oil company in its bid to take over an “American Energy” company–a foreign oil company with ties to a second bad guy from this ad, Iran. We didn’t find much connecting Black with Venezuela, looks like most of the good lobbying contracts were in neighboring Colombia.

But it’s awfully hard to watch this ad, knowing the full story, and retain a straight face.

Norton has occupied so much of our attention in this campaign by trying to out-radical her GOP primary opponents, most recently agreeing with Tom Tancredo that Barack Obama represents a “greater threat” to America than the Nazis or nuclear annihilation. Those kinds of spectacles, seemingly one after another as Norton has fought desperately to appease the GOP base, have left very little oxygen in the room for all the things Democrats thought they would be talking about–at the top of that list being the outsize number of of high-level lobbyists in Norton’s immediate family. Well, it’s possible that by calling out so much of her own brother-in-law’s business, Norton has provided the perfect segue into that discussion all by herself.

More commentary here.

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13 thoughts on “Jane Norton: Drill Baby Drill, Dictators Bad…Oops!”

    1. Is NOT Jane Norton’s friend.

      Does make you wonder why they pick Al Waleed though. Maybe there are too many pictures of Charlie and everybody higher up in the Saudi royal family?

      #FAIL once again, Jane.

  2. that, both here in Colorado and all over the country, in spite of anti-incumbent sentiment, anger at Dems from the left as well as the right and the crazy notion that Obama is not only an extreme liberal (not so you’d notice) but a socialist (not even in the ballpark), GOP tea party pandering hysterical craziness may yet get the collective Dem ass out of that sling.  

    GOP candidates like Norton being forced to dance, ever more wildly and obviously, around the unavoidable contradictions inherent in both supporting their corporate overlords and pandering to populism (how to rail against and support Wall Street, the big corporate lobbies and BP at the same time) may still save Dems from the worst case scenario turn-over.  

    If things don’t go too badly for Dems, it certainly won’t be on account of any brilliant aggressive, high ground taking messaging on the part of the President and leadership.  The message ought to be something like if Wall Street and the lobbyists are pissed off at Dems and fine with Rs, then you know which party is on the Main Street side, not hey we’re really not being mean for no reason to the Masters of the Universe.  We’re trying to be their friends almost just like the GOP.

    If not too many seats are lost, Dems will have to send thank you notes to the GOP’s wackiest candidates, especially the wacky ladies. There sure seems to be an abundance of them.

    1. In the past the Republican candidates could say different things to different groups. That’s how they held their various interest groups together. But with the web, that no longer works – everyone sees what they say everywhere.

      This is a fundamental problem for the Republicans. Some are trying to find a way to tap dance around this. But Jane is trying to work it the old way and that’s killing her.

      1. but that goes for everyone.  Used to be nobody would ever know what a pol said a to one little group  as opposed to anther.  Now there are no little just between us private events where you can freely tell each different group of people just what you think they want to hear.  

        The Rs fix isn’t just that. It’s getting really hard to support endless huge tax breaks and looser regs for the big corporate interests and share the people’s anger at being screwed by same. This puts them in the position of having to say things so ridiculous people have to notice, such as that just because the financial melt down was caused by ponzi scheming cowboys running wild due to lack of regulation and enforcement the answer is… we should be very careful not let that lead us to more regulation and enforcement.  Ditto for BP disaster.  

        Heads exploding on the right. They naturally want to say things like the real tragedy is the that we may have hurt BP’s feelings and that the financial melt down that has put hundreds of thousands of retirement plans on hold is just a little old ant compared to the importance of letting fat cats get fatter.  When they say those things out loud now the angry screwed citizenry goes nuts.  Not convenient when you’ve been getting elected by the angry and fearful for decades, telling them how big corporations are their best friends.  Trickle down, don’t ya know.

        Too bad Dem leadership is doing such a piss poor job of seizing this moment. Good thing the Jane Nortons are looking so off the wall clueless all by themselves, not much help from Dems required.  Now if we could have both at once 2010 would go  much better for Dems, not to mention 2012.

          1. smoke and mirrors phony wealth creation that came crashing down destroying billions in wealth thereby decimating or completely wiping out people’s retirement accounts, while the flim flam artists retained all their personal wealth.  Not surprised that you choose to change the subject.  I would change the subject every chance I got if I were a conservative, bloodsucking thieves loving, trickle downer.  

            Ooh! That last bit gives me a great idea! With the current fashion for vampires I think I just came up with the next blockbuster movie franchise:  Vampires on Wall Street. Then we could do Deep Sea Drilling Vampires, Coal Country Vampires, War Profiteer Vampires, The Vampires of Halliburton.  We could keep the whole Vampire thing going for years.  Hope someone from Hollywood is reading this blog.    

            1. .

              I’ve created a monster.

              Sis, you go after those leeches and flim-flammers all you want.  More power to ya.  

              In my twisted version of conservatism, I don’t think Ponzi is any better for the Republic than McCarthy.

              From what little I know of economics, these folks make their billions by denying little investors access to accurate and complete info about the markets.  They create the fetters that stand in opposition to unfettered Capitalism.  Or something.

              Market “regulation,” AFAIK, is primarily about ensuring that accurate information is available, but small investors are still free to make bad decisions.  

              .

              p.s.:  I don’t put much stock in “trickle down.”  Sounds too much like “sitting around, waiting for something to fall into my lap.”  I prefer that the economy provide structural opportunity for individual agents taking charge of their own darn selves and making something (good/ productive/ creative) happen.

              .

              1. You always were hard to pin down.  Too bad your brand of conservatism is going the way of the dinosaur. Some of it makes sense in small doses:)

                I’m still looking forward to years of Vampire movie material here.

  3. Let’s drill in the Gulf of Mexico, way down, say a mile or so deep!

      We know there’s oil there and, that deep, what could go wrong?  Go Wrong, Go Wrong, Go Wrong

    1. In fact, there’s so much oil down there, they’re drilling even more wells to try the stop the oil that just gushing up of its own accord !!

      Drill baby drill!!  Then drill some more !!

      Energy crisis solved. Everybody back in the bus.  

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