President Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline is having no effect on the project's political potency, as its friends and foes jockeyed for position ahead of today's first meeting on a payroll tax cut bill that could see its fate tied to the $7 billion Canada-to-U.S. oil link.

As senior Republicans in both chambers vowed to override Obama's denial of a permit to pipeline operator TransCanada Corp., Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) joined environmentalists who ran a vocal campaign against Keystone XL on a march aimed at tarring its congressional supporters for financial ties to the oil industry.

The back-and-forth all but obscured the practical impact of the pipeline's apparent demise at Obama's hands last Wednesday, with the GOP weighing a second bid to push the pipeline forward by linking it to the payroll tax relief that expires Feb. 29.

"The president had an opportunity to do something on his own about the ongoing jobs crisis" by approving the XL line, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said today, charging Obama with denying the project to appease "his liberal environmental base."

"The only thing that stood in the way of the single biggest shovel-ready infrastructure project in America was him," McConnell added.

Greenpeace and 350.org, crucial players in the Democrats' environmental base, today prepared to join Sanders on a march initially scheduled to help encourage the White House to veto the pipeline from Alberta's oil sands to Gulf Coast refineries. But following Obama's Keystone XL denial, the protest morphed into a broader slap at lawmakers who now hope to take power over the pipeline from the president and push it toward construction.

Green godfather and former Vice President Al Gore encouraged such efforts in a blog posted late yesterday. While hailing Obama's denial as "an important win," Gore pointed to "the continuing risk that advocates of the pipeline will come back with a modified proposal backed by lobbying and campaign contributions" and urged fellow activists to "remain engaged and prepared to beat this proposal again when and if it resurfaces."

The proposal to fast-track the pipeline that is considered most likely to clear the House this winter, either as an add-on to a long-term payroll tax-cut plan or on its own, is a plan by Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) that would empower the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve Keystone XL. But Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) is set to release his own measure overriding Obama's decision today, boasting a Democratic co-sponsor in Rep. Dan Boren (Okla.).

While the GOP pushes to keep the pipeline alive -- touting its promised influx of imported Canadian oil-sands crude as an economic boost that would diminish U.S. consumption of Middle Eastern fuel -- one of the party's senators also vowed today to remind Obama that he committed last week to support a smaller pipeline between the Gulf and the oil terminus of Cushing, Okla.

That shorter oil-sands crude link backed by Obama last week "is too important to delay," Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) wrote in an op-ed for The Hill. "Extensive environmental reviews have been conducted on this portion of the pipeline since 2008, so any remaining permits and approvals should be fast-tracked so that we can get Americans back to work in Oklahoma and Texas."

Alberta-based TransCanada has committed to pursuing that shorter pipeline even as it works with Republican leaders to secure a permit to cross the northern border. The Army Corps of Engineers, but not federal pipeline safety regulators, would need to approve an Oklahoma-to-Texas leg of Keystone XL before construction begins (Greenwire, Jan. 20).