After Barack Obama denied approval to the Keystone XL pipeline, he spent the next two weeks blaming Republicans for forcing him to make a decision on it — at least when he wasn’t blaming Hillary Clinton for the decision.  When the company behind the project announced that they would start building it anyway, the White House announced that Obama had been in favor of it all along:

In a statement, White House press secretary Jay Carney said President Obama “welcomes” the news.

Really? He could have “welcomed” the pipeline a month ago and have avoided all of the drama.  A month ago, though, people weren’t talking about rapidly escalating gas prices — and about the decision that kept additional Canadian oil from getting to American refineries.

John Boehner called out Obama for his for-it-after-he-was-against-it doubletalk:

“The President is so far on the wrong side of the American people that he’s now praising the company’s decision to start going around him,” Boehner said in a statement to ABC News.

Boehner said the president “can’t have it both ways. If the President thinks this project is good for America, he knows how to make it happen right away. Until he does, he’s just standing in the way of getting it done.”

Yeah, the We’re happy you didn’t take my no for an answer response is rather weird.  Why not just reconsider the application, if the news is so “welcome”?

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at [email protected] with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

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