If I was a Democratic strategist I would take this story and the Tweet it contains and use it through campaign 2010. If the GOP truly wanted to distance themself from Joe Barton’s apology to BP and pressured him to distance himself from his own apology then it failed. The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel:
Hours after getting a respite from House Republicans, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) has cheekily responded to criticism over his “apology to BP” by tweeting a link to an American Spectator article titled “Joe Barton was right.”
But wait! There’s an UPDATE to this article, too:
UPDATE: Barton has removed the tweet.
Of course: it got noticed by the Washington Post — and it became clear that his apology for the apology was a non-apology.
But could there be another reason he took it down? Could it be this from Political Wire:
A new Public Policy Polling survey in Texas suggests Republicans are well advised to stay clear of Rep. Joe Barton’s (R-TX) apology to oil giant BP for how they were treated by the Obama administration.
“The poll numbers indicate this is an issue where Democrats could find some resonance with independent voters. They see Barton negatively by a 35% to 14% margin, think he should lose his leadership post by a 45% to 29% spread, think Obama was right on this issue 59% to 29%, and oppose an apology to BP 75% to 12%. Given those numbers GOP leaders would probably like to see this issue disappear as soon as possible.”
This independent voter looks at the poll numbers and says: Ditto.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.