Liberals Sneer at Ted Kennedy

Liberal darling Ted Kennedy has run afoul of the left over his opposition to a controversial wind farm project in Massachusetts.

Liberals “are now heaping scorn on the 73-year-old senator,” reports syndicated columnist Froma Harrop. “Young audiences boo at his name, and the leftish ‘Daily Show’ on Comedy Central makes fun of him.”

The energy-producing wind farm on Nantucket Sound was slated to be the first such project in the U.S., and polls showed that 84 percent of state residents favor it.

The Cape Wind Project would erect 130 windmills in Nantucket Sound and could provide three-fourths of the power needed by Cape Cod and nearby islands, which is now largely supplied by coal-fired plants.

But the project has been “frustrated at every turn by a handful of yachtsmen, Kennedy included, who don’t want to see windmills from their verandas,” writes Harrop, who’s on the staff of the Providence Journal.

The new book “Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound,” by Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb, chronicles the bipartisan efforts to kill the wind farm project.

An earlier book by Peter Schweizer, "Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy,” also disclosed Kennedy’s efforts to torpedo the wind farm.

“The Cape Wind Project would be built in Nantucket Sound, about six miles off the coast from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis,” Schweizer explained. "The problem was not aesthetic; the Kennedys wouldn’t be able to actually see the turbines from their home. Instead Robert Kennedy Jr., who had been beating the drum for alternative sources of energy for more than a decade, complained that the project would be built in one of the family’s favorite sailing and yachting areas.”

Kennedy was not alone in opposing the project. Authors Williams and Whitcomb disclose that Sen. John Warner, R-Va., added a rider to an urgent Iraq war-funding bill that barred the Army Corps of Engineers from spending money permitting offshore wind projects.

Warner’s wealthy relatives own choice waterfront property on Cape Cod, Harrop notes.

After an outcry, Warner was forced to back down.

Another Republican, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, introduced a bill banning virtually all offshore wind projects in the U.S. He owns real estate on Nantucket Island.

But Kennedy remains the main focus of wind farm proponents, including Greenpeace – which has launched an anti-Kennedy TV ad campaign in support of the offshore project.

“After 45 years in the Senate, Kennedy should be polishing his liberal legacy,” Harrop concludes. “But his manipulative attacks on this wind farm have so sickened supporters that his long career may be headed for a sorry end.”