A little more than a month ago in this very paper I wrote that it was time for the GOP to go after the Democrats on the energy crisis that has been brought about by Democrat policies. If you notice every Democrat in a marginally competitive district has now coined a new term, “the failed Bush and so and so energy policy” depending on who they are running against.
Why are they doing this? Because energy prices, more notably gas prices are the biggest issues in this election. They know they are vulnerable on this issue, and that it has been the policy of the Democratic party to make it hard to explore, drill and refine oil in this country. It was fashionable in America for the liberals to say that our cars should get smaller (as theirs got bigger) and that we should put higher and higher taxes on gas and bigger cars to help the environment. It was easy for Democrats to increase regulations to stop companies from drilling and building refineries when gas
prices were at the $ 1.00 to $2.00 level, even when it approached $3.00 it’s difficult but it made people feel good. The gas hit four dollars and it looks as though it is going higher!
Democrats in the past have called for European like tax’s on gas to reduce our driving habits and to stop American from being the worlds biggest consumer of oil. To these Democrats what we have now is what they wanted.
Don’t believe me? Ever heard “We are only 10% of the worlds population but we consume 40% of the worlds oil”? Of course you have! It has been their mantra for 30 years. It is the Democrats classic approach to everything; make Americas feel guilty about being American.
For years now liberals have been saying “We are glutinous, racists, selfish polluters who care nothing for the planet. With Kyoto they went as far as saying we should put self-imposed barriers on our growth and prosperity because it’s not fair to the rest of the world. That is a liberals mindset. A perfect example was last month, when Barack Obama was in Oregon he said, “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Letting other countries tell us what we are going to eat? That’s leadership to the Democratic party? Not to me.
There was a time when the GOP stood up for working families against a growing federal government. For mothers who wanted to stay home by pushing a bigger child deduction, and by trying to bring Social Security to the younger generations by letting people keep their own money. Republicans have gotten away from that kind of rhetoric.
Maybe because they addressed a lot of the problems when they took control of the congress. But by ignoring the history of the energy crisis we are in now they are playing into the Democrats’ hands. The GOP has lost one constituency in the last few years that was a key to their victories and those are the so called Reagan Democrats. The 40% of tradesmen and women who vote Republican and who carried the GOP to majority status in the last few decades. By not speaking to working peoples issues we allowed the Democrats to take these voters back with rhetoric. It’s time Democrats have their record aired in public.
The Democrats have a lot to answer for. It is public record that for over 20 years the Democrats have been against drilling and building new refineries. It is time to put them on the spot and ask every Democrat candidate what they will do to LOWER the price of gas. They will hem and haw but they can’t answer, because everything they believe in and have pushed for years is against cheep gas and energy prices. It is against their base to allow drilling or the building of refineries. They believe that gas prices are where they should be and that the higher the prices the better for the environment. They want prices this high. The problem they have is the American people don’t!
The GOP has to put each and every Democrat candidate on record as to his/her stand on what to do to bring gas prices down. Not how to find new sources of energy but GAS. Democrats will argue that it will take 10 years to bring new sources online, the GOP has to show that 10 years ago we voted on drilling in ANWAR and it was the Democrats who defeated it. If it had been voted on, the oil would be flowing today.
Everyone, including the oil producing countries knows, if the United States decided to go out and find and drill for oil, we could do it cheaper and cleaner than anyone else. Why did we stop? Because those oil producing countries dropped the price of oil so low that it was not worth our companies efforts to go after the oil fields and develop them. Nobody noticed outside of Texas and the other oil producing regions of the US, gas
was cheep and abundant.
It was easy for the Democrats to slowly demonize and regulate the oil companies and where they drilled, because they weren’t drilling anyway.
When gas was under two dollars the American people easily choose the environmentalists over “Big Oil” and didn’t want to look into the fact the liberals were wrong about most environmental stands they took. Remember the caribou would all stop mating when the Trans. Alaska pipeline was built? Did they? No the Caribou are thriving because of the pipeline.
It is time the Democrats answer for their position and stop blaming the Republicans for the crisis we are in now. The GOP has to remind Americans that the reason we are in a crisis is our own governments making.
There is nobody claiming that there is a shortage of oil like in the 70’s. Let every candidate on both sides of the aisle give their stand on drilling and refining. The American people will see that for thirty years the Democrats have under cut our own countries growth and national security by making it impossible for our countries energy industry to supply us with the oil and natural gas that it takes for us to keep growing our economy. Would we be in the middle east fighting wars if we had continued to supply our own oil?
________________________________
Jim Leahy, a conservative grassroots organizer, is a regular contributor to The Chicago Daily Observer.