The campaign of US Senate candidate Bob Turner is offering a free tank of gas to the New Yorker who can most closely guess the date and time when New York’s junior senator Kirsten Gillibrand will flip her position on the Keystone XL pipeline (note: I do work for Turner.) Senator Gillibrand voted against it this month, even though it would help stop rising gas prices that are strangling household budgets everywhere.
How can the campaign be so sure that Ms. Gillibrand will flip? Three reasons:
1. She always flips. Ms. Gillibrand is the Zelig of New York politics. When she ran for an upstate congressional seat, she claimed to be a gun-toting (for real), anti-illegal-immigration, conservative Democrat. But once she was appointed to the Senate by Governor Paterson, she sprinted to the left — like hundred-meter-dash sprinted — to gain the favor of public employee union bosses and primary-voting liberals. She never turned back. Today, according to the widely respected National Journal, Ms. Gillibrand is rated the most left-wing senator in America. The transition from Calamity Jane to Jane Fonda took fewer than three years.
2. Ms. Gillibrand is famous in Washington for walking in lock-step with President Obama. Mr. Obama, realizing that opposing Keystone is a very bad idea for the country, flipped on the issue this week. Kirsten Gillibrand is now dangling out there on her own.
3. Senator Gillibrand is a politician above all else. The reason she is so protean as a legislator is that being elected is her only priority it seems. Earlier this year, after taking tens of thousands of dollars from Hollywood muckitymucks, Ms. Gillibrand sponsored that PIPA legislation that would have effectively killed the Internet industry in New York City. She voted for L.A.’S interests over New York’s for campaign coin. But once the New York Internet community realized it and rose up, Ms. Gillibrand dropped PIPA like a bad date — right after President Obama did the same.
New Yorkers have had it with rising gas prices. Everyone realizes there are many factors going into those prices, but when their own US senator is opposing projects like Keystone and increased domestic oil production to appease the environmental left and avoid getting a primary, they are not going to be happy with her. And when someone — anyone — is unhappy with Kirsten Gillibrand, she flips. That might be an endearing personal trait in a friend, but not in a United States Senator.
Oh, my guess is today at 5:28 pm.
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