Anger over coal helped an imprisoned felon defeat President Barack Obama this month in several West Virginia counties.
Now
Republicans hope Mitt Romney can squeeze an electoral diamond out of
coal country in battleground states such as Ohio, Virginia and
Pennsylvania.
The GOP has stoked the fires by accusing Obama’s
Environmental Protection Agency of making it more difficult to mine or
burn coal, and Republicans made hay when a “clean coal” section quietly
turned up on the president’s campaign website after the West Virginia
drubbing.
During Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Ohio last week,
Republicans made sure coal turned up seemingly everywhere in protests,
GOP email blasts, Web videos and even a chance restaurant encounter with
a Romney campaign flack.
