Sarah Palin was met with a couple new chants from the crowd at a Belmont, Ohio rally yesterday: "Mine, Baby, Mine!" and "Coal! Coal! Coal!" (Hey, I guess it beats "Terrorist!")

Palin was in coal country so it makes some sense but it's pretty messed up that the only thing that can get the right wing crowds riled up is either extreme anger or the prospect of increasing our dependence on fossil fuels.

So, it's an interesting contrast to hear Hillary Clinton's latest crowd-pleasing line at a Pennsylvania rally today on behalf of the Obama/Biden ticket:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton offered a Democratic rejoinder to the Republican chant of "drill, baby, drill." Said the one-time presidential candidate: "Jobs, baby, jobs." [...]

At the Republican National Convention and various GOP rallies, an oft-repeated chant was "drill, baby, drill," a plea for more oil drilling. McCain and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin back more offshore oil drilling; Palin favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Clinton said Democrats have a better answer: "Jobs, baby, jobs."

Part of the whole "Drill, Baby, Drill" ethic is a twisted sense of nationalism, as though the most important part of the phrase "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" is the word "foreign." You know, cuz whatever fossil fuels we get out of the ground are just fine as long as they come from American groud! So it's smart for Clinton to turn the chant on its head, into an economic call to action, not that it's divorced entirely from energy, of course. One of both Clinton's and Obama's plans for returning jobs to America has been to create a whole green economy where people will be put to work developing/installing/maintaining/repairing, etc. renewable alternative energy sources. As both Bill and Hillary Clinton have often said on the stump this year, solar panel installer is one job that can not be outsourced.

Update [2008-10-13 19:25:31 by Todd Beeton]:And it should be noted that it's no coincidence that Hillary's chant tracked with Barack's message of the day (and, no doubt, the next 23 22 days):

We can't wait to help workers and families and communities who are struggling right now -- who don't know if their job or their retirement will be there tomorrow; who don't know if next week's paycheck will cover this month's bills. We need to pass an economic rescue plan for the middle-class and we need to do it now. Today I'm proposing a number of steps that we should take immediately to stabilize our financial system, provide relief to families and communities, and help struggling homeowners. It's a plan that begins with one word that's on everyone's mind, and it's spelled J-O-B-S.

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