President Obama attributed the decision to block construction to "the rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congress" saying it "prevented a full assessment of the pipeline's impact, especially on the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment".
House Speaker John Boehner says this decision "destroys tens of thousands of American jobs".
The furor is set to continue.
What does the public think? The Environmentalists clearly care, 12,000 turned up to demonstrate in Washington. So far, the public opinion has been muted. There is no doubt that the GOP are going to use this as an issue in the 2012 campaign. The question remains will this only serve as rhetoric for the GOP faithful, or can the undecided population be gullible enough to be convinced by the GOP that President Obama does not really care about the unemployed?
