Honest broker

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

In response to John Baird’s trip to the Middle East, Paul Dewar challenges the Harper government’s policy in the region.

“Mr. Harper wants us to believe that grandstanding is more important than being an honest broker,” said Dewar. “His unbalanced approach to the Middle East is harmful to the prospect of peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians…

“The government’s approach is unbalanced when it’s equating a request from Palestinians through legitimate diplomatic channels with Israel’s settlement policy, which is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” said Dewar. “The government is now calling for negotiations, but in May it did everything it could to undermine consensus for President Obama’s peace initiative.”

Sound familiar?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Barack Obama, last night. “My message is simple.  It’s time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America.”

Jack Layton, last March.  “As prime minister, I wouldn’t use your hard earned tax dollars to reward companies that ship jobs to the States or overseas. I’ll target investment to create jobs right here at home.”

On Newt’s Canadian comment: Harper’s long view of Canada-U.S. trade

By John Geddes - Monday, January 23, 2012 at 2:02 PM - 0 Comments

After he won the South Carolina primary on Saturday, Newt Gingrich’s derisive remarks about Barack Obama’s relationship with Stephen Harper had a ring of partial truth about them.

Gingrich is quite right of course to point out that the Prime Minister is “conservative and pro-American.” And Newt stayed within the realm of reasonable comment—not always rigorously adhered to in this oddball Republican race—in suggesting that Obama’s rejection of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline has gone piece toward forging a “Chinese-Canadian partnership.”

Continue…

You’ve got a friend in Newt

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 23, 2012 at 8:25 AM - 0 Comments

The winner of the South Carolina primary shouts out the Prime Minister.

“What Prime Minister Harper — who, by the way, is conservative and pro-American — what he has said is he’s gonna cut a deal with the Chinese and they’ll build a pipeline straight across the Rockies to Vancouver,” Gingrich said Saturday night. “We’ll get none of the jobs, none of the energy, none of the opportunity. Now, an American president who can create a Chinese-Canadian partnership is truly a danger to this country.”

See previously: Keystone rejected and Keystone and everything after

Keystone and everything after

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

The State Department apparently saw little to be excited about. The Liberal party is carefully neutral. John Bennett welcomes the news. Nebraska’s governor is disappointed. Mitt Romney is shocked. Newt Gingrich is displeased. John Boehner is sad. Robert Redford is happy. Politico pronounces victory for both Democrats and Republicans.The New York Times editors praise the President’s decision.

Republicans intent on scoring campaign points immediately repeated their fallacious cries that “tens of thousands of jobs” would be lost by not instantly approving the project. They made no mention of the risks inherent in the project: harm to the Canadian boreal forests and threats to water supplies in the Midwest. Bipartisan opposition to the pipeline has notably been led by Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska, a Republican … Far more important to the nation’s energy and environmental future is the development of renewable and alternative energy sources. This is the winning case that Mr. Obama should make to voters in rejecting the Republicans’ craven indulgence of Big Oil.

Gabriela and Gustavo provide a timeline. Paul recalls when Mr. Harper thought it was the Prime Minister’s responsibility to make sure he was respected in Washington.

Keystone XL: a timeline

By Gabriela Perdomo and Gustavo Vieira - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 5:52 PM - 0 Comments

(Paul Sakuma/AP Photo)

For better or worse, it’s been roadblock after roadblock for North America’s most infamous pipeline. Here’s a look at that tortuous timeline:

February 2005 – TransCanada Corp. announces plans to spend $1.7 billion to build a 3,000 km pipeline to move heavy oil from Alberta to Illinois. About 40 per cent of the route would be a conversion of existing pipelines that carry natural gas to handle 400,000 barrels of heavy crude. TransCanada was expected to be operating the pipeline as early as 2008.

Continue…

Keystone: The Prime Minister and the President chat

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 3:32 PM - 0 Comments

From the PMO press office:

“Earlier this afternoon, Prime Minister Stephen Harper received a phone call from Barack Obama, President of the United States. President Obama informed the Prime Minister of his Administration’s decision to turn down TransCanada’s application to build and operate the Keystone XL pipeline.

“The President explained that the decision was not a decision on the merits of the project and that it was without prejudice, meaning that TransCanada is free to re-apply. Prime Minister Harper expressed his profound disappointment with the news. He indicated to President Obama that he hoped that this project would continue given the significant contribution it would make to jobs and economic growth both in Canada and the United States of America.

“ The Prime Minister reiterated to the President that Canada will continue to work to diversify its energy exports.”

Keystone rejected

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 11:53 AM - 0 Comments

(This post last updated at 6:57pm.)

So reports the Washington Post. With an asterisk.

The Obama administration will announce this afternoon it is rejecting a Canadian firm’s application for a permit to build and operate a massive oil pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border, according to sources who have been briefed on the matter. However the administration will allow TransCanada to reapply after it develops an alternate route through the sensitive habitat of Nebraska’s Sandhills.

The Prime Minister’s last comments on Keystone came Monday in his interview with the CBC.

I think what’s happened around the Keystone is a wakeup call, the degree to which we are dependent or possibly held hostage to decisions in the United States, and especially decisions that may be made for very bad political reasons. So I think that just … it puts an emphasis on the fact that we must perform our regulatory processes to get timely decisions on diversification of our markets.

Update 2:03pm. Maybe “rejected” is too simplistic a characterization. The New York Times has the project “on hold.”

The administration has until Feb. 21 to decide the fate of the 1,700-mile pipeline to carry heavy crude oil from formations in Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Officials are expected to announce that they cannot meet that deadline and that they are looking for ways to complete a thorough environmental review before making a final decision on the project … The State Department is expected to say that routing, environmental and safety concerns raised by the project are too complex to be decided on that abbreviated timetable and is recommending that President Obama reject it for the time being.

Update 3:17pm. And here is the official statement from the U.S. State Department.

Today, the Department of State recommended to President Obama that the presidential permit for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline be denied and, that at this time, the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline be determined not to serve the national interest. The President concurred with the Department’s recommendation, which was predicated on the fact that the Department does not have sufficient time to obtain the information necessary to assess whether the project, in its current state, is in the national interest.

Update 3:28pm. A note from the Prime Minister’s Office on Mr. Harper’s conversation with Mr. Obama. Continue…

Threats at home and abroad

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 17, 2012 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

CBC has posted Peter Mansbridge’s complete interview with the Prime Minister. In addition to his concerns about “certain people in the United States” who “would like to see Canada be one giant national park,” Mr. Harper is also worried about Iran.

Military action has been discussed, Mr. Harper added. “President [Barack] Obama’s said all options are on the table and I can certainly tell you that, when we talk about these issues, we talk about the full range of questions around these issues.

“But there is certainly no consensus on, you know, ultimately how to deal with this matter.” Canada’s position on dealing with Iran is that allies should work together, Mr. Harper said. “I’ve raised the alarm as much as I can, but obviously I don’t advocate particular actions publicly. I work with our allies to see if we get consensus on actions,” he said.

Is this Obama’s defining moment going into 2012?

By John Parisella - Friday, December 23, 2011 at 2:33 PM - 0 Comments

The payroll tax cut controversy is providing President Obama with a moment similar to the government shutdown confrontation between President Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich in 1996, which most observers credit for Clinton’s successful re-election campaign in 1996. Back then Speaker Gingrich refused to vote for appropriations to keep the government in operation in order to force government reductions in spending programs , giving Clinton the choice to either capitulate or allow the government shutdown. He chose the latter and Gingrich got the blame. It became a test of strength and leadership on the part of the president. It was a defining moment for his presidency and his re-election the following year.

The Senate last weekend voted to extend both the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits for two months. Granted, Obama got less than he wanted—he wanted one year and wanted to tax millionaires to pay for it—but he is winning the debate on middle class tax relief. Senate Republicans understood that and joined their Democratic counterparts in voting for the measure. The House, in later rejecting the deal, showed that Tea Party intransigence still has a hold on the Republican caucus and could give Obama an edge as the election year begins in earnest in the New Year. Continue…

Return of the fighter

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

Carolyn Kaster/AP

As they argue amongst themselves heading into the first primary votes next month, Republican presidential hopefuls can agree on this much: President Barack Obama has been “absent,” “missing,” “nowhere” and ineffectual on the most pressing issues of the day.

“He’s done nothing” on the debt, said Mitt Romney at a campaign stop last month. “He has completely disengaged from his job,” Michelle Bachmann told Fox News in November. Obama has shown “no leadership” on China, according to Jon Huntsman, and a “lack of leadership” on Syria, according to Rick Perry. On the economy, quipped Bachmann: “It’s been like, Where’s Waldo?”

It’s something of a U-turn from what Republicans argued in the prelude to the mid-term elections in 2010: that a power-hungry Obama was steamrolling America into an unrecognizable socialist state. That line helped sweep Tea Party candidates into Congress and gave Republicans control of the House of Representatives. But all of a sudden, they say, Obama is fiddling his thumbs—particularly in the face of America’s US$15-trillion debt.

Continue…

About that border deal between Canada and the U.S.

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 12:02 AM - 0 Comments

Amid the pageantry of a joint appearance at the White House alongside President Obama, the prime minister on Wednesday touted the new border security agreement in grandiose terms: the “most significant steps forward in Canada-U.S. cooperation since the North American Free Trade Agreement.” The agreement, though, is less a single leap than a series of many incremental gains, say the technocrats who labored in the shadows to put the multifaceted deal together. One Canadian official likened border negotiations to the cliché about football—it’s a “game of inches.” And this agreement covers a lot of inches—including myriad new ways in which the two nations will share data about travelers and cargo, the promise of a single on-line portal for importers and exporters who today have to schlep paper documents to a variety of government agencies, and pilot projects that will allow certain kinds of pre-inspected cargo to cross the border without stopping. It also includes a border wait-time measurement system and an inventory of border fees to help citizens and policy makers understand how well things are working—or not.

There is no doubt that Canadian officials have learned their lesson from years of trilateral “Three Amigos” summitry that resulted in lengthy bureaucratic to-do lists and more controversy than results. This time, they cut out Mexico, instead running a bilateral process focused on a limited number concrete high-impact results that could be implemented in a short period of time. Rather than endlessly negotiating over grand policy changes, they agreed to more modest pilot projects in complicated areas such as land border-preclearance in order to “build confidence” and demonstrate tangible results on the ground. Continue…

Is Obama the winner so far of the GOP nomination race?

By John Parisella - Monday, November 21, 2011 at 5:12 PM - 0 Comments

Once again, a new anybody-but-Mitt-Romney candidate has surged in the Republican polls. This time, it is former Speaker Newt Gingrich. After surviving onslaughts from Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain, you would think Mitt Romney might start seeing some daylight and begin to build the support he’ll need to capture the nomination. He is the candidate with the best match-up numbers against Obama, so you would expect the Republican base to begin to see the advantages of Romney as the nominee. Instead, it is becoming evident that while Romney’s support may be steady, his candidacy is not catching fire. He remains the unloved frontrunner.

As with the others before him, Gingrich will now enter the phase of close scrutiny. Can he survive and emerge as the permanent anybody-but-Romney candidate? Or will he fail, as the others did before him, to maintain his momentum?  Continue…

It’s time for Canada to seek other friends besides the U.S.

By the editors - Monday, November 21, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Charles Dharapak/AP

From no-brainer to brainless in just a few weeks—Canada’s best interests have once again been trumped by American politics.

Just a few weeks ago, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was calling the approval by the United States of TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico a “complete no-brainer.” The benefits to both countries in terms of employment, energy security and trade from the $7-billion project were so obvious and manifest that U.S. President Barack Obama’s consent seemed a sure thing.

Then Hollywood got involved. Superannuated stars such as Robert Redford and Daryl Hannah added their names to over-the-top civil disobedience protests against a “tar sands” pipeline from Alberta. Among the few coherent complaints expressed by green groups was concern the pipeline would cross the Ogallala aquifer that provides several Midwest states with drinking water. The project quickly became a test of Obama’s environmental credentials.

Continue…

The U.S. and Canada: we used to be friends

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, November 21, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

No one was more surprised than TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. itself by the Obama administration’s decision to impose a fresh year or more delay on a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline—TransCanada’s proposed 2,673-km project that could transport more than 700,000 barrels of crude oil from the oil sands in Alberta to refineries in Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast of Texas. It had been heavily promoted by the governments of Canada and Alberta. And after two years of studies and drafts, the U.S. State Department had issued a final environmental assessment on Aug. 26 that had turned out to be even friendlier to the pipeline than supporters had been hoping for.

Indeed, the State Department concluded that there are “no significant impacts” to the environment along the route of the pipeline. The department also concluded that the pipeline would fill a need: even under a “low demand” outlook for oil, and even if there was increased fuel efficiency and a greater use of alternative energy sources, the hunger for Canadian crude oil would continue to grow among Gulf Coast refineries because supplies from countries such as Mexico and Venezuela are declining. Alternative transportation methods, such as trucking or rail, would add more emissions and run a higher risk of accidents than a pipeline. The project would not increase greenhouse gas emissions, State reasoned, because the oil would be produced for somebody to use in any case. And State also looked at 14 alternative routes and decided that none of them was preferable to the one proposed by TransCanada.

Then, little more than two months later, on Nov. 10, the State Department abruptly balked and declared the need for an additional study—one that would take a year or more—to look at an alternative pipeline route within the state of Nebraska that would avoid the Sand Hills area. That is a region of grass-covered sand dunes that covers a quarter of the state—and also Nebraska’s Ogallala aquifer, one of America’s largest underground sources of fresh water. The study is expected to delay a permit decision, which State had said would come by the end of December, until 2013. Had the project been approved on schedule, it could have started operating by then; the delay will push final approval for the project past the presidential election.

TransCanada was stunned. “We actually found out about it after others did,” company spokesperson Shawn Howard told Maclean’s. “It was a surprise. We thought the conclusions reached in the final environmental impact statement were pretty clear.” The company believed it had picked the best route. “The biggest issue was distance. This was the shortest route through that part of the state, and as a result it had the least amount of land disturbance and affected the fewest land-owners,” he said.

Continue…

REVIEW: Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 11:15 AM - 0 Comments

This Bob Woodward-style inside account of President Barack Obama’s economic team is grabbing headlines for one quote. According to Suskind, the warfare between National Economic Council director Lawrence Summers and Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag grew so destructive by mid-2009 that their chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, ordered them to start attending bury-the-hatchet dinners once a week. At the first such meeting, as the pair talked about their Clinton administration pasts, Summers suddenly confided: “We’re home alone. There’s no adult in charge. Clinton would have never made these [Obama’s] mistakes.”

The quote is a sort of miniature allegory for the book, to which the Summers-Orszag battle is fundamental. Summers is Suskind’s Satan—an unrelenting sociopath who wins every argument with fencing tricks, testosterone and bluster. Summers gradually runs so far with the traditionally third-rate NEC job that he ends up with almost as much clout as Emanuel. Orszag, by contrast, is portrayed as a naive, data-driven optimist who lacks Summers’s brutality or savvy. One notices, however, that the dinner dialogue was almost certainly leaked to Suskind by Orszag, who left OMB in August 2010. (There were only two people at that table.)

One also notices that Orszag doesn’t seem to have disagreed with Summers. A lot of people, it seems, are leaving the Obama White House disillusioned. Over and over in Suskind’s narrative, Obama dazzles potential hires with his command of detail and his imagination. And over and over he disappoints—failing to rein in rogues like Summers, tolerating unbelievable insubordination, cultivating sexism, and using instinct to tackle problems that require the incisive reasoning one would expect from a celebrated law professor. Suskind’s portrait of the President is so disconcerting that one is almost forced to take another long, hard look at those Onion jokes about Obama being bipolar. It’s essential reading, especially for Obamaphiles.

Don’t count Obama out just yet

By John Parisella - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 2:19 PM - 0 Comments

At this time next year, American voters will be choosing a president. Current polls suggest a tight election, with President Obama trailing in some crucial swing states. But a year in politics is an eternity.

The Obama people are banking on the appeal of stability. “Don’t compare me with the Almighty,” Obama said in a recent speech, “compare me to the alternative.” The current crop of Republican presidential candidates has indeed been getting mixed reviews ahead of the primaries. Mitt Romney and Herman Cain may be leading the polls, but neither is showing much traction with independent voters. Many of the leading contenders have shown they are vulnerable—Romney fails to generate enthusiasm, Rick Perry has lost his early momentum, and Cain is mired in scandal. Continue…

Obama the hawk

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

Barack Obama used U.S. air power to prevent a massacre and facilitate the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. He sent a team of Navy SEALS to conduct a secret surgical strike in Pakistan that took out Osama bin Laden, America’s public enemy number one. He sent a Predator drone armed with Hellfire missiles to assassinate an American citizen in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, whose extremist preaching was linked to several attempted terrorist attacks against the U.S. All three objectives were achieved without invasion, occupation, or the loss of American lives.

The last decade was dominated by the Bush administration’s “shock and awe” display of U.S. military might, a swagger that descended into a “long war” of occupation and nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq that left thousands of Americans dead and wounded, and cost upward of a trillion dollars. But cold, calculating and nimble, Obama has turned a new page on the projection of American power. His emphasis on technology, intelligence, and leaning on allies is leaving a smaller and less costly U.S. military footprint on the globe, but one that is proving to be just as lethal to its adversaries.

In his first days as President, Obama ordered interrogation techniques cleaned up and the prison at Guantánamo Bay to be closed within a year. Congress objected, and Guantánamo has remained open, but the President has added zero detainees to the inmate population. Indeed, he’s barely taken any prisoners—instead, he has presided over many more drone strikes against terrorist suspects than George W. Bush. He is not waterboarding enemy prisoners who have been removed from the battlefield; he is killing them where they stand. (The administration denies frequent accusations that it is killing militants when capturing them would have been feasible.)

Continue…

Billionaires against Obama

By Jaime Weinman - Monday, November 7, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Canadians in America do a lot of things very well, including Obama-bashing. Real estate and publishing tycoon Mort Zuckerman (New York’s Daily News, U.S. News & World Report) supported Barack Obama for president in 2008, but he’s become the leading spokesman for an aggrieved minority: billionaires who feel Obama is treating them badly. Or, as the Montreal-born Zuckerman put it on the CNBC network: “There is a sense in the business community, not just for big business but for business all over, that this is an anti-business administration.”

Zuckerman, a McGill graduate who moved to the U.S. in 1961, has been worried about Obama since 2009, even while claiming that he “helped write” one of Obama’s speeches (White House speech writers denied they’d ever met Zuckerman). He wrote that Obama was creating “a country of ‘born-again budget hawks’ who will rise up if taxes are boosted to pay for it all,” and commemorated the first year of the administration with an article entitled, “He’s done everything wrong.”

In the last month, the 74-year-old Zuckerman has laid out a harsher case: it’s Obama’s fault the economy isn’t recovering. “Those who might help us escape,” he wrote in the Financial Times, “are now being held back by the anti-business policies of President Barack Obama.” The biggest drag on business, he says, is Obama’s criticism of “fat cats”: “this perceived hostility,” wrote Zuckerman, “saps the animal spirits required for taking risks on expansions and start-ups.”

Continue…

Yes we can–give Obama the boot?

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

David McNew/Reuters

Twice a year for a decade, John Della Volpe has surveyed thousands of university students across America about their engagement in politics. Lately, he has noticed a striking change.

When he began the survey in 2000, says Volpe, the director of polling at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, young people were tuned out. “In 2000 and early 2001, they didn’t vote and weren’t participating because, they told us, politics and government didn’t matter. To make a difference, they told us you had to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself,” he recalls. September 11 and the Iraq war changed all that. Suddenly, the issues were on a greater scale, and the differences between the administration of George W. Bush and the Democrats were often stark. For nearly a decade, the youth vote increased in every federal contest over the previous comparable election.

“Perhaps the only silver lining to 9/11 was that it awoke the political spirit of this generation,” says Volpe. And it mattered. In the 2008 presidential election, more voters were under 30 (18 per cent) than were over 65 (16 per cent). The so-called millennials—sons and daughters of the baby boomers—still don’t turn out to vote proportionally as frequently as older people—but there are enough of them to make an increasing impact.

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Can Romney be stopped?

By John Parisella - Monday, October 31, 2011 at 4:26 PM - 0 Comments

With Hermain Cain riding high in the polls and former Governor Mitt Romney racking up endorsements, some cracks have started to show in the campaigns of their opponents for the GOP nomination.

In recent days, a prominent Tea Party leader has called on Michelle Bachmann to quit, Rick Perry has floated the idea of skipping some upcoming debates, and Jon Huntsman has retreated to New Hampshire. The rest of the field has so far proven unable to distinguish themselves from the pack. Traditionally, developments like these favour the candidate with the most money, the best organization, and the strongest base of support—in this case, Mitt Romney.

There is a consistent pattern emerging in this race and that is the stability of the support for Romney. It’s not high, and it shows little growth beyond 25 per cent, but it’s steady. His debate performances in this campaign far surpass those of 2008, leading a growing number of people to view him as the one to beat. Despite the buzz about Cain, the pizza magnate’s support could prove volatile once the primary season begins. Continue…

Careful what you wish for, Prof. Mendes

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 4:42 PM - 25 Comments

Rebecca W/Flickr

Political newspaper iPolitics.ca accidentally unearths a breaking story, as liberal law professor Errol Mendes uses its electronic pages to praise the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. In Citizens United SCOTUS ruled that campaign-finance law must treat corporations, unions, and other groups as though they have the same speech rights as the individual people of which they are made up. The American left cannot mention this heinous act of pro-corporate radicalism without ejecting a fount of furious spittle; the “repeal” of corporate personhood is, for example, the first and foremost demand of the Occupy Wall Street protesters and their allies elsewhere. President Obama memorably denounced Citizens United from the podium, staring the nine justices right in the eyes, in his 2010 State of the Union address. But Mendes apparently thinks corporate speech is an “important form of political expression” and that it may be protected by our Charter. Damn, Canada really is moving rightward! Continue…

Do the math

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 7, 2011 at 9:44 AM - 3 Comments

Nate Silver measures the impact of campaign advertising.

Campaign ads matter more when a candidate can outspend the opponent. This simple fact sometimes gets lost because people fixate on the content of ads. But the volume of ads may matter more. Consider the 2000 presidential election. In the final two weeks of the campaign, residents in battleground state were twice as likely to see a Bush ad as a Gore ad. This cost Gore 4 points among uncommitted voters. The same thing happened in 2008, when Mr. Obama vastly outspent his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.

Whistle stops and tweets

By Chris Sorensen - Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Sarah MacKinnon

Twitter has emerged as a favourite tool of U.S. politicians trying to get their message out, even if that message is former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin telling people to “refudiate” something. And with US$6 billion expected to be spent during the 2012 U.S. presidential election campaign, executives at Twitter have decided it’s a good time to cash in on all of the partisan bickering flying back and forth in 140 characters or less. Twitter recently said it will start selling political ads through its “promoted tweets.” The tweets won’t appear in users’ regular feeds, but will show up during searches. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is said to be one of the politicians included in Twitter’s pilot project. Perhaps he’s hoping to boost his 100,000 Twitter followers—a far cry from Palin’s 655,000, not to mention U.S. President Barack Obama’s 10 million.