Dan

Calabrese

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May 27, 2008

Domestic Oil Exploration Should Be Year’s Top Issue, But Republicans Are Too Stupid

If Republicans had any brains, they would make domestic oil exploration the number one issue in this election year. Surely the voters would have little sympathy for a party that wants to keep trillions of barrels worth of oil resources in the ground while they pay through the nose at the pump.

But it’s hard to say you’ll solve a problem when you’ve already had a chance and failed – and this is the Republicans’ never-ending quandary in the aftermath of their pathetic stewardship of Congress.

My colleague Herman Cain this week did the mainstream media’s job for it and exposed the fact that Congress has voted three times in recent months to block exploration of domestic oil supplies in the United States.

This not only includes the much-discussed oil reserves in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but also in the Outer Continental Shelf and in the oil-shale-rich areas of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. Oil shale is a mineral containing oil, which makes it more expensive to exploit than mere oil-drilling, but the exploration would likely be worth it. As Herman reported, there is an estimated two trillion barrels of oil shale in the United States.

Did you see those gas prices soaring above $4 a gallon the past few days? And you realize, of course, that the foreign countries on whom we depend for most of our oil have no intention of increasing production because the laws of supply and demand are making them fabulously rich at the moment.

Now, Herman lambasted the Democratic majority in Congress, and rightfully so, for refusing to allow these natural resources to be exploited. But as we sit here in 2008, this should not even be an issue. The Republican Party controlled Congress and the White House from 2001 to 2006. We should have been drilling this oil and mining the shale seven years ago.

Republicans in Congress will protest that they didn’t have the votes to overcome Democratic filibusters. That is garbage. If an issue is important for the nation, you take it to the people, make your case, win political support and make it impossible for the minority party to use procedural moves to stop you. In other words, you exercise leadership.

If the Democrats still insisted, limp-wristed ex-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist could have at least forced them to engage in real filibusters – the kind where you have to stand in the well of the Senate all day and night, for weeks if necessary, and never stop talking. As it was, Frist simply accepted that nothing could ever pass the Senate without 60 votes – making it easy as could be for Democrats to keep the United States oil-dependent.

And it wasn’t only the Democrats. More than 20 Republicans joined with Democrats to keep ANWR drilling from even passing the House on a majority vote. One of those Republicans was my own absolutely horrible congressman, Vern Ehlers.

But in spite of the Republicans’ pathetic record on this issue, I think they could still turn it into an election year winner in 2008. They would have to admit their own past failings, point out the urgency of the situation, explain the vastness of the resources we have right in our own backyard and insist the Democrats explain exactly why they prefer relying on sheikhs, emirs and Hugo Chavez to supply America’s petroleum needs.

The Democrats’ position is indefensible. The only reason they get away with it is that no one is asking them to defend it. The mainstream media doesn’t hold their feet to the fire. The Republicans are too busy demagoging immigration and running from President Bush.

The Republican Party has exercised almost no leadership on the issue of domestic oil exploration. The Bush Administration at least developed a set of policy recommendations, but the cowards who ran the GOP Congress couldn’t bring themselves to enact it, nor could they effectively make the case to the American people that drilling our own supply is not just a sop to the evil oil companies, but the only sensible approach for a nation that intends to control its own economic destiny.

The fact that this isn’t the biggest issue in America right now speaks to the failings of both parties, and of the media. If Republicans can’t see this winning issue staring them right in the face – not to mention the fact that it’s a winning idea for the nation – they really do deserve to lose.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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