To Drill Offshore or Not to Drill?
15 July 2008 5:30 am by Taylor Marsh
BY TAYLOR MARSH
Yes, it’s a flip-flop. But it’s also a politically
expedient flip-flop. If nothing else, the GOP has great timing, though it’s
totally in Congress’s hands. That said, Republicans are framing offshore oil
drilling as a “solution” issue. Nice marketing ploy if they can pull it off. If they do, Democrats will be in trouble.
Many people laughed while economists
scolded Hillary Clinton when she, like McCain, suggested a gas tax holiday.
But the perception sent a message of caring about what people are dealing
with today, even if it was a very short-term suggestion that infuriated the environmental and energy egg heads. Families are hurting
badly by oil prices, so they appreciated what Clinton was offering.
As regulars know, I recuse
myself from getting too deep into oil issues, because my brother-in-law,
whom I respect and love dearly, is deeply involved and used to be a big oil
executive for Exxon-Mobil. He’s educated me quite a bit on what oil companies
can do today, the technology they use in drilling. So, for the record, I can
say that I’m no longer radically opposed to offshore drilling. However, I still
subscribe to the Al Gore alternative energy
theory and campaign
(as well as Robert
Redford’s Apollo Alliance), which still puts me quite at odds with Republicans
like my brother-in-law and John McCain. (As an aside, Gore will be giving
a major speech Thursday on energy and the environment.)
Oil man giant T. Boone Pickens
has his own solution to our energy challenges:
His big idea? Harness the mighty wind that sweeps through his beloved Texas
and Oklahoma—and the rest of the Great Plains—and use it to displace
natural gas as a fuel for generating electricity. That would free up the plentiful
domestic source—”the only fuel that would help with our transportation
system right now”—to power cars instead of turbines. That would
reduce the need for imported oil by 38 percent, saving about $300 billion
per year.
Also see PickensPlan.
Jerome offers
what I think is something Democrats should think long and hard about. Being
in the solutions business, as Clinton was, is good politics. That’s where Republicans
are positioning themselves.
Its a dangerous strategy for Democrats to be cast as playing the ‘blame game’
while Republicans promote a ’solution’ to the energy problem. Because no longer
is the Republican position going to be to just be about fossil fuels either,
there’s money to be made.
Martin argues against drilling, hitting conservatives hard on it, while giving them credit for kicking our political butt on the subject:
$4-a-gallon gasoline has proven to be the tipping point beyond which Americans simply cannot soak up the costs of travel by car any longer. … And there’s no more textbook example of “the old way” than Newt freaking Gingrich carrying water for Big Oil, while simultaneously providing greenwashed cover for John McCain’s lack of a comprehensive energy policy.
That would be Gingrich’s “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.” petition and campaign. Ah, those Republicans, they do come up with catchy titles.
On Obama, I don’t like his
nuclear energy ties, which he’s reluctant
to talk about and omits from his energy commercials, while his ethanol prescriptions
are unconvincing at best. I agree with Krugman
on this one: Bad for the economy, bad
for consumers, bad for the planet — what’s not to love?
However, if you look at McCain, beside the drilling proposal and the gas tax holiday, we’ve got nukes, nukes and more nukes. But he never tells you what he’s going to do with the waste. We still haven’t solved that issue.
This is the most important 21st century
issue we face, which goes directly to America’s national security, too. Nothing
is more important looking forward. Right now it’s advantage Republicans. The media doesn’t help.
Calling Al Gore.
