(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

WWVA, broadcast Aug. 27, 2012, via Raw Story. David Blomquis interviewed Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore.

So you know that “war on coal” that Team Romney is accusing Team Obama of waging (Psst! Willard! There’s no such thing as “clean coal,” so maybe the president is actually fighting for the health and well-being of Americans)?

Why, here’s Willard now!

If there’s a war, it seems it wasn’t Obama’s doing since he certainly wasn’t the one who provoked this reaction from coal miners, via Cleveland.com:

When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney visited an Ohio coal mine this month to promote jobs in the coal industry, workers who appeared with him at the rally lost pay because their mine was shut down.

The Pepper Pike company that owns the Century Mine told workers that attending the Aug. 14 Romney event would be both mandatory and unpaid, a top company official said Monday morning in a West Virginia radio interview. 

A group of employees who feared they’d be fired if they didn’t attend the campaign rally in Beallsville, Ohio, complained about it to WWVA radio station talk show host David Blomquist.

Raw Story:

“Yes, we were in fact told that the Romney event was mandatory and would be without pay, that the hours spent there would need to be made up my non-salaried employees outside of regular working hours, with the only other option being to take a pay cut for the equivalent time,” the employees told Blomquist. “Yes, letters have gone around with lists of names of employees who have not attended or donated to political events.” [...]

“We do not appreciate being intimidated into exchanging our time for nothing. I heard one of your callers saying that Murray employees are well aware of what they are getting into upon hire, or that they are informed that a percentage of their income will go to political donations. I can not speak for that caller, but this is news for me. We merely find out how things work by experience.” [...]

At the time, conservative blogs and websites like The Daily Caller, The Gateway Pundit and Townhall trumpeted the fact that “hundreds of Ohio coal miners attended” the event. Even though the mine was closed on Aug. 14, soot-covered miners were staged behind the GOP hopeful as he spoke.

No surprise there. Everything about the Romney campaign, including the candidate, is superficial and staged.