David Freddoso writes a column at NRO about how the Democrats appear to engage in 'doublethink', a term used by George Orwell in 1984, and it's worth passing along some excerpts to you:
In the novel 1984, George Orwell used the word "doublethink" to describe the process of believing two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The concept invites an appropriate but superficial comparison to congressional Democrats' current approach to gasoline prices.
Idea Number One: High gasoline prices are good. A high price, imposed through federal carbon taxes or carbon caps, is precisely the mechanism by which Democrats hope to curb carbon emissions. We know that this mechanism works because it is already working: As gas prices rise, American consumption is down right now, year over year (a historical rarity). CO2 emissions from gasoline are down from 2007 by a modest 84,000 tons, or roughly 2 percent.
Idea Number Two: High gasoline prices are bad. With constituents irate over gasoline prices that are pushing $5 a gallon, Democrats complain that high prices are a bad thing. They have dreamed up a number of boogie men responsible for high prices and drafted silver-bullet bills to kill them off.
Freddoso explains that Democrats really only pretend to believe in Idea Number Two, as evidenced by Barack Obama's statement in June that the excessively high prices causing so much angst across America are not necessarily bad, but that we just should have gotten there a little more gradually. Freddoso notes that the Kyoto Protocol -- which Bush has resisted signing, but the Democrats want because of their environmentalist wacko base -- calls for emissions reductions many times greater than those induced by higher gas prices. If we sign Kyoto, we'll end up with prices around $7 or $8 per gallon, if not more.
Here's the crux of the problem for Dems:
Given that lower gasoline prices would defeat the purpose of their entire environmental program, Democrats are in a very awkward position on the energy issue. They know it, too. They are caught between their environmentalist allies, well-funded groups with a very loud voice in Washington, and their constituents, working people with almost no voice in Washington. The constituents' feelings are only now becoming so intense that they are starting to matter. Regular people are noticing that high gasoline prices hit them not only at the pump, which is bad enough, but also through inflated prices for food and other important daily necessities that require transportation or otherwise track the price of oil.
This summer, Democrats have sought some course of action that will appease these constituents — something that gives a false but convincing impression that Democrats are indeed concerned about high gasoline prices. They have proposed several solutions that range from the impractical ("sue OPEC") to the irrelevant (crack down on "speculators") to the absurd ("nationalize the oil industry").
The Dems proposed a bill in the House that would require oil companies to use their leased land (which is another farce they're using as an excuse) or give it up. The problem, of course, is that those leases may not contain any oil. That's why they have to explore for it first:
Rep. Gene Green (D., Tex.) remarked in June: "You can't produce on every acre or even every 100 acres. I think those numbers come from people who don't understand this business."
Sure enough, upon further questioning, it was revealed that the 4.8-million-barrel number was made up by Democratic staffers without the involvement of government scientists — a "guesstimate," as Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D., Ill.) put it. The bill failed to attain the two-thirds majority it needed, but it would not have lowered gasoline prices anyway.
Freddoso then makes the same point I've made on this blog before: if Congress took real steps toward increasing the domestic oil supply, the price would drop right away:
"Once the speculators in the market see that we're serious about increasing the oil supply," one House GOP aide told National Review Online, "the door won't be large enough for them to get out." Don't forget: speculators short oil, too. As in all other markets (such as housing), prices do indeed decline as soon as speculators are convinced by reality.
Now that Bush has removed the Presidential ban on drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), the pressure really increased on the Dems. They are the only ones standing in the way of more drilling now. America wants more drilling, so the key for Dems is to keep people from realizing that they're the ones stopping it:
Recent polls show that between 57 and 67 percent of Americans want to drill for oil on the OCS. The U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) has estimated that there are 85.9 billion barrels of oil (11 years' worth of U.S. consumption) and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (an 18-year supply) sitting out there. And there could be much more, since many areas off the coasts remain unexplored.
But, as we've begun seeing, some of these freshmen Democrats, or Dems in strongly contested states, have started sliding away from the party stance, speaking favorably of increased drilling. As is almost always the case, the American people will get what they want. As Freddoso concludes:
There is nothing like the prospect of five-dollar gasoline to remind everyone in Congress — perhaps even Democrats — that their constituents' well-being is more important than any ideological environmental goal of keeping gasoline prices high.
Once again, this is a sure-win issue for the GOP, if they can show the Dems' true colors on energy production and bringing down prices. McCain is on the right path, although he is still strangely resistant to drilling in ANWR. But, this needs to be an institutional issue - every Rep at the national and state level needs to drill this point home (sorry, couldn't resist): it is the Democrats causing high energy prices.
If they can do that, it might not be a landslide after all.
There's my two cents.
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