Jay Carney Makes Baghdad Bob Gibbs Look Like Honest Abe

February 21, 2012

“The president didn’t turn down the Keystone Pipeline.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney first says Republicans "forced" President Obama to deny the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. Later in his press briefing, Carney says Obama didn't turn down the pipeline.

"In terms of Keystone, as you all know, the history here is pretty clear. And the fact is because Republicans decided to play political with Keystone, their action essentially forced the administration to deny the permit process because they insisted on a time frame in which it was impossible to completely approve the pipeline," Carney said when asked about the pipeline by ABC News' Jake Tapper.

Later in the briefing, Carney says it is the Republicans' fault.

Jake Tapper: "How can you say that you have an all the above on approach if the President turned down the Keystone pipeline? And you blame the Republicans for making it political."

Carney: "But the President didn't turn down the Keystone pipeline. There was a process in place, with long precedent, run out of the State Department because of the issue of the pipeline crossing an international boundary, that required an amount of time for proper for review after an alternate route was deemed necessary through Nebraska at the request of the Republican Governor of Nebraska and other stakeholders in Nebraska and the region that needed to play out, to be done appropriately. You can't review and approve a pipeline, the route for which doesn't even exist.

"The Republicans were the ones who unfortunately decided because they were looking for scalps, I guess, or wins in a situation where they somehow found themselves on the wrong side of cutting taxes for 160 million Americans last December. They decided to play politics with this decision and attack the payroll tax cut extension. Even though it was made clear by the State Department that doing so would make it impossible for them to conduct the review responsibly, they did it anyway knowing what the result would be."

SOURCE: Real Clear Politics