David McKinley is no Mr. Softee* when it comes to the Biden administration

At the top of the front page of today’s Wheeling Intelligencer:

McKinley Smoking Over Kerry Coal Comments

650 words later, we’ve learned from Steven Allen Adams that the congressman did not like what Kerry said at last week’s international climate change conference and so McKinley turned to Twitter:

Yet again elitist John Kerry showed what the Biden Administration truly believes – they don’t care about coal workers or their families. Kerry has spent the week promising climate activists that by 2030 the US “won’t have coal.” https://t.co/a02MWkxK3n

— David B. McKinley (@RepMcKinley) November 9, 2021

In the last half of the article, Adams cites familiar statistics on how America’s energy mix has been changing.

What is new in this article?

There is not much beyond the Kerry statement and McKinley Twitter response. (Neither, in my estimation, are all that significant.) I reviewed coverage of the conference and Kerry’s comment may go a bit farther than the administration’s own timeline as Axios’ Andrew Freeman has pointed out. The Biden administration, however, has made no secret of its desire to reduce America’s carbon footprint as other Western nations have. (According to Numerical, Albania, Austria and Sweden, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, and Switzerland no longer have coal plants. In Great Britain, the BBC recently reported that coal made up just 1.6% of Britain’s energy mix in 2020.)

Additionally, there is nothing new in McKinley’s comments on coal and climate change.

How is this news?

It isn’t. Its purpose is to demonstrate to West Virginia voters that just because McKinley voted with the Biden administration on infrastructure doesn’t mean he won’t stand up to the Biden administration on other topics.

McKinley on with Hoppy Kercheval earlier today

Here is part of the McKinley’s interview with WV Metro News:

.@RepMcKinley was 1 of 13 Republicans to vote for the infrastructure bill. What was his reasoning behind his vote? He explains it all to @HoppyKercheval. WATCH: https://t.co/yCFQ3nDJuy pic.twitter.com/db4hW93wDJ

— MetroNews (@WVMetroNews) November 10, 2021

Most of what is on this portion of the interview is about McKinley’s decision to join with Democrats to pass the infrastructure bill. Kercheval does press McKinley on why infrastructure was not passed in the first two years of Trump’s presidency when the Republicans controlled both chambers. Unfortunately, Kercheval lets McKinley off the hook when he answers that they had other priorities like a tax cut. (Were Republicans incapable of doing two things at once? The tax cut came early, why didn’t Republicans pass something afterwards?) Kercheval also allowed McKinley to blame Nancy Pelosi for the failure to pass an infrastructure bill in Trump’s final two years. (That’s not what happened -- see previous post.)

Finally (not on the above clip), McKinley made another reference to his opponent not being from West Virginia in talking about Mooney’s and Miller’s vote on infrastructure.

“I don’t know what’s motivating them. I don’t know what the infrastructure was like in Maryland,” McKinley said.

*Mr. Softee sold soft ice cream from a truck when I was growing up. I have not seen or heard (it always played the same tune) anything about the business in a long time. Wikipedia claims the company is still operating.