The Western swings of the presidential candidate’s continues with McCain following Obama to Vegas today. McCain is flying in from California, where he tried to keep a glimmer of hope that he can make that bluest of blue states competitive in the fall, but also to raise some campaign cash in preparation for Obama’s summer onslaught. Obama just completed a trip to New Mexico and Vegas: The West is definitely a swing region for November.

But McCain was paying the most attention to his increasingly grandiose plans for energy security; an emerging cog in a campaign once built around nothing more than Iraq and the GWOT.

Trying to dig his way out of controversy over his offshore drilling flip-flop and again cozy up to moderate greens concerned with gas prices and the environment, McCain has been putting out various proposals aimed at alternative fuels and conservation rather than the hard line of drilling our way out. The 300 mil prize for electric car batteries and his pledge to “green” the federal government are examples.

He riffed on this theme again during a speech in Vegas. Energy and the economy are huge topics in a region and city hit hard by foreclosures and and the energy crisis.

McCain spoke more about energy compromise and touted his alternative plans than he has before. It’s a calculated move to cover his tracks over drilling and hammer home what could be a winning issue against Obama and his increasingly bare energy proposals.

Energy security is a vital question because it concerns America’s most fundamental interests, and above all the safety of our citizens from the violence of the world. All the tact of diplomacy cannot conceal a blunt reality. When we buy foreign oil, we are enriching some of our worst enemies. And in the Middle East, Venezuela, and elsewhere, these regimes know how to use the power of that wealth.

In the case of Iran, despite our own sanctions, they use it to pursue nuclear weapons. They use it to threaten Israel and other democracies. Elsewhere, oil wealth allows undemocratic governments to control their own people – to crush dissent and to subjugate women. They use it to finance terrorists around the world and criminal syndicates in our own hemisphere. These are some of the most stagnant and oppressive societies on Earth, held back by oil-rich elites who would not last long if their own people had a choice in the matter. From these elites, we get the oil that fuels our productive economy. From us, they get the money that preserves their unjust power. Moreover, by relying upon oil from the Middle East, we not only provide wealth to the sponsors of terror – we provide high-value targets to the terrorists themselves. Across the world are pipelines, refineries, transit routes, and terminals for the oil we rely on. And Al Qaeda terrorists know where they are.

Even if these other interests were not in the balance, America would still need to follow the straightest path to energy security, because of a threat literally gathering around the Earth itself. Back when Americans first learned to associate the word “energy” with “crisis,” we didn’t fully understand how fossil fuel emissions retain heat within the atmosphere. We didn’t know that over time these greenhouse gasses could warm the planet. We didn’t know they could melt glaciers and ice sheets, or raise the waters and alter the balance that sustains life. Good stewardship, prudence, and simple common sense demand that we act to meet this challenge, act quickly, and act together.

My friends, America’s dependence on foreign oil was a troubling situation 35 years ago. It was an alarming situation twenty years ago. It is a dangerous situation today. And starting in the term of the next president, we must take control over our own energy future, and become once again the master of our fate.

In recent days I have set before the American people an energy plan, the Lexington Project – named for the town where Americans asserted their independence once before. And let it begin today with this commitment: In a world of hostile and unstable suppliers of oil, this nation will achieve strategic independence by 2025.

This pledge is addressed to all concerned – to those abroad whose power flows from an accident of geology, and to you, my fellow Americans, whose strength proceeds from unity of purpose. Together, we will break the power of OPEC over the United States. And never again will we leave our vital interests at the mercy of any foreign power.