There’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d ever utter, but it’s entirely true. No sarcasm, no backhanded compliments. Just a 100% true applause for Senator Lindsey Graham’s fight against what he called a “half-assed” energy bill.

Background: there have been calls for an “energy-only” bill that scraps ideas like cap and trade, and it looks like Obama might cave to the demands. Take it away, Senator.

“It’s the ‘kick the can down the road’ approach,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. “It’s putting off to another Congress what really needs to be done comprehensively. I don’t think you’ll ever have energy independence the way I want until you start dealing with carbon pollution and pricing carbon. The two are interconnected.”

…

But Graham pledged to fight back against Senate Democratic leaders if they ultimately heeded the moderates’ call to just pass the Energy and Natural Resources Committee bill (S. 1462) that establishes a nationwide renewable electricity standard, along with a raft of other energy incentives, including a provision that could bring oil and gas rigs closer to Florida’s Gulf Coast.

“If the approach is to try to pass some half-assed energy bill and say that’s moving the ball down the road, forget it with me,” Graham said, adding that the energy-only proposal does not do enough to promote nuclear power and it ignores revenue sharing for states that agree to offshore oil and gas exploration.

Can you argue with that? I sure as hell can’t.

Okay, sure, I’m not a big fan of offshore drilling, but within the backdrop of using it as a bridge between dependence on foreign oil and a break from fossil fuels entirely I have always promoted the notion, and defended Obama’s similar stance before. The cyanide pill here is obviously the potential for ANWR drilling, but Graham is 100% right that an energy bill that ignores emissions is terribly inadequate.

Okay, fine. Well played, Senator Graham.