Boy, President Obama had better hope his three-dimensional chess skills are better than they look in his environmental policies -- especially yesterday's announcement about his offshore drilling plan, which was basically a gift to the oil industry and their conservative allies.
Because afterward, they showed their appreciation by largely savaging Obama, as John Boehner did in denouncing the policy for not going far enough. ("Far enough," in Republican parlance, means "total capitulation".)
And then there was yesterday's Special Report with Bret Baier -- you know, one of Fox News' vaunted "hard news" shows that's supposedly really "fair and balanced" -- discussing the policy, which brought on a fellow named Patrick Creighton from the Institute for Energy Research (an oil-industry front group), who made the following comparison:
Creighton: We call it the Tonya Harding approach, where you break your opponents' kneecaps to get ahead. This president and his environmental allies continue to tout that wind, solar, and other renewable fuels will displace fossil energy -- and that's just not the case.
Afterward, Bret Baier chortled over it with reporter Jim Angle:
Baier: The Tonya Harding approach. [laughs]
Angle: [Prolonged laughter]
And then they wonder where all those nutcase Tea Partiers get the ideas for their nutty signs.
Meanwhile, what Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes said.