Beyond Teflon

Unions that are mainly concerned with protecting workers seem to be going the way of the dinosaur. Now the unions only care about protecting Democrats in office.

Consider this evidence from the AP:

WASHINGTON -- Unions may be united in working to re-elect President Barack Obama, but their leaders also are trying to repair bitter divisions over his rejection of an oil pipeline from Canada to Texas.

Trade unions representing workers who would benefit from thousands of new construction jobs from the Keystone XL pipeline are furious at other unions that joined environmentalists in opposing the project. (“Union leaders look to heal divisions over pipeline battle”).

It was Obama who rejected the Keystone XL pipeline, but the trade unions are furious at – well, it doesn’t matter who they’re furious at, because they’re not furious at Obama.

Or not allowed to be.

After the White House blocked the pipeline in January, Laborers union President Terry O'Sullivan said he was "repulsed by some of our supposed brothers and sisters lining up with job killers like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to destroy the lives of working men and women."

His harsh words were directed at groups such as the Transport Workers Union and the Amalgamated Transit Union, which said the risk of possible oils spills and environmental contamination outweighed the benefit of new jobs.

There’s no question it was President Obama who blocked the pipeline, but the only people this union boss can think of to be repulsed by are other union people who echoed environmentalist opposition to Keystone XL.  Fine, blame them along with Obama.  But why can’t he blame Obama?

Are the unions jammed so far down into the lint of Democratic Party pockets that their leaders dare not utter one word of criticism against the party’s choice for re-election?   Do we even need to ask?

If necessary, groups bloodied by the President’s disastrous governance can lash out all they want against other groups that lobbied for Obama’s bad decisions, but remember that whatever went wrong, it wasn’t Obama’s fault.

Pathetic.