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Today in Missouri, John McCain said that all of Obama’s solutions to energy problems involve raising taxes. “For his part, Senator Obama has a different outlook on all of this. Instead of new energy production, he wants new energy taxes,” McCain said.

He also criticized Obama for not supporting his gas tax holiday, “And he’s against any tax relief to give folks a break at the pump. I’ve noticed a pattern here. When the speechmaking is over and you stop to figure out what all the rhetoric really amounts to, the answer is usually some new tax. For Senator Obama, the solution to every problem and the answer to every challenge is a new tax. And he is convinced that a 1970’s-style windfall profits tax is just what America needs in the 21st Century.”

McCain’s alternative energy solution is to build 100 new nuclear reactors in the United States. Of course, this easier said than done as nobody wants a nuclear reactor in their community or back yard. What I find funny is the contradiction that McCain is supposed to be an environmentally conscious Republican, yet he is willing to ruin the environment by burying nuclear waste in our ground. If the nation would switch to nuclear power, the prime beneficiary would be the energy companies, who are largely supporting McCain in this election.

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I honestly don’t believe that McCain’s portrait of Obama as a tax and spend liberal will have any impact on voters whose primary concerns seem to be the economy, the war, and healthcare. When the economy is good, the Republican tax issue works, but when the economy is bad, it tends to fall flat on its face. Voters don’t care about taxes right now, they want the price of food and gas to come down, they want to go back to building equity in their homes, and they want to be able to go see a doctor.

It seems that John McCain’s answer to every policy question is to propose a tax cut, and criticize his opponent. Obama has firmly branded himself as a new kind of politics, so this old school mudslinging from McCain is certain to fail. McCain doesn’t have any solutions for the problems that matter. In fact, he doesn’t seem to be very interested in the issues that voters consider most important. McCain can keep quoting from the old Republican playbook, but it won’t work against Barack Obama.

You can read McCain’s speech here