This morning on Fox News Sunday, Sarah Palin suggested there may be a “connection” between President Obama “taking so doggone long” to respond to the oil spill and “contributions” to his administration from oil companies:

PALIN: Well, I think that there is, perhaps, a hesitancy, to -- I don't really know how to put this, Chris, except to say that the oil companies who have so supported President Obama in his campaign and are supportive of him now, I don't know why the question isn't asked by the mainstream media and by others if there's any connection with the contributions made to President Obama and his administration and the support by the oil companies to the administration -- if there's any connection there to President Obama taking so doggone long to get in there, to dive in there and grasp the complexity and the potential tragedy that we are seeing here in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now if this was President Bush or if this were a Republican in office who hadn't received as much support even as President Obama has from BP and other oil companies, you know the mainstream media would be all over his case in terms of asking questions, why the administration didn't get in there -- didn't get in there and make sure that the regulatory agencies were doing what they were doing with the oversight to make sure that things like this don't happen.

Shortly after, on CBS' Face the Nation, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs stressed that the administration had responded “immediately” to the spill and rejected Palin's charge:

GIBBS: I'm almost sure that the oil companies don't consider the Obama administration a huge ally. We proposed a windfall profits tax when they jacked their oil prices up to charge more for gasoline. My suggestion to Sarah Palin would be to get slightly more informed as to what's going on in and around oil drilling in this country.

From the May 23 edition of CBS' Face the Nation: