Washington Post blogger David Weigel wrote Tuesday that not all Republicans are running away from Rep. Joe Barton’s surprising comment that the BP’s $20 billion escrow account for Gulf oil damages amounts to a government “shakedown” of BP.

Weigel points to a couple GOP candidates who’ve criticized the fund in Wisconsin, and writes:

In Colorado, it was an aide to once-frontrunner Jane Norton (Ken Buck now leads in some polls for the GOP’s U.S. Senate nomination) who called the escrow account a “slush fund.” I’m not seeing a massive trend here, but I’m not sure that local reporters are all posing the question. Plenty of conservative candidates agree with Rush Limbaugh that the fund amounts to “thuggery” or a shakedown — something the Gulf Coast Republicans who favored the fund disagree with.

We know, thanks to the Denver Post and Progress Now, that Norton’s Josh Penry later said the aide, Aindriu Colgan, was not speaking on behalf of the Norton campaign, even though he had said he was representing Norton.

Penry said the campaign didn’t have a comment on the fund set up by BP.

So here in Colorado, reporters are posing the question, at least to Norton’s underling, but they aren’t getting an answer one way or the other. This makes me think reporters should, per Weigel’s suggestion, ask other candidates about the BP fund. I don’t know about you, but I’m curious about what they’d say.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2010 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Colorado U.S. Senate, Denver Post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.