David

Karki

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August 4, 2008

Drilling is a Veto Away for the Grand Oil Party

"There are things you can do individually, though, to save energy. Making sure your tires are properly inflated – simple thing. But could we save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling – if everybody was just inflating their tires? And getting regular tune-ups? You’d actually save just as much!"   – Sen. Barack Obama, July 30, 2008

With the above, Obama shows just how utterly disconnected from reality and living in his own imaginary far left-wing world he is. First of all, you can never conserve your way out of a shortage. What is it about the simple phrase “get more” that he can't understand? Second, the U.S. currently consumes 20 million barrels of oil per day, and in a great many things other than motorized vehicles. All the tire and engine checks in the world wouldn't begin to make a dent in that.

Last, the Green River Formation in Colorado and Utah holds roughly 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil from shale. That alone is enough to last 100 years, and that's but one location. Off-shore ocean drilling, ANWR, the list of domestic places holding tons of oil goes on. In truth, there is no shortage at all.

The only reason we have an artificial shortage resulting in $4-plus-per-gallon gas is that America's energy policy – and thus her economic well-being and national security – is being held hostage by the radical environmentalist lobby, through their Democratic puppets in Congress. They're determined to permanently remake this nation in their twisted Marxist image by forcibly eliminating automobiles through denial of the energy that powers them.

Get rid of the car, and the suburban lifestyle is by definition unsustainable. This applies to home heating and cooling even more. Why climate-control all those suburban single-family homes when one inner-city high-rise can be so handled for so much less? With ultra-expensive energy, people will have to migrate back into cities, and thus under liberal government control.

Think about it – who chooses where and when the mass transit runs? Hint: It's not you. But own a car, and you choose as you see fit. Who chooses the lifestyle policies for the apartment building? Hint: It's not you. But own a house and you can blast music or smoke if you like because it won't affect anyone else.

This fundamental shift of power explains why Democrats are taking what would otherwise be a politically inexplicable position. This isn't about energy for them – it's about their best shot at laying the foundation for totalitarianism. Get people to accept $4 or $5 or $6 a gallon gas as an unchangeable way of life, and they'll willingly accept many of these intrusions on personal liberty and standards of living.

Which brings us to the question of what can be done to stop this and allow the American people access to their own natural resources. There is perhaps one way to force the issue, if Republicans can find their long-lost courage and decide to go all-in with the hand they have, which is better than they think it is.

The Democrats haven't come close to passing a budget, determined as they are to stall until Obama is sworn in to pass what they really want. Thus, they need to pass a continuing resolution to fund the federal government past September 30 and avoid a shutdown in the heart of campaign season. The ban on issuing domestic drilling leases is typically renewed therein. (It expires annually, and is really a ban on allowing access to the land, not on drilling itself.)  As President Bush has rescinded the concomitant Executive Order, Democratic renewal of the ban is the only thing preventing drilling.

If the GOP can grow a spine, they could either filibuster the ban-containing resolution (which the Democrats likely don't have the required 60 votes to prevent), or better yet, President Bush could veto it and GOP senators could uphold it (for which they would have the 34 votes needed). Then the Democrats would be forced to explain why they would be willing to shut the government down solely to stop drilling.

This is a high-stakes gamble, and it would need to be well-coordinated. The Democrats will scream bloody murder and a biased media will spew their talking points. But the GOP can calmly answer all of this, truthfully painting the Democrats as controlled by the radical greenies, and willing to screw the masses in order to serve them. At the same time, the GOP is on the side of the masses, willing to do whatever it takes to finally access America's plentiful energy supplies for them. It might just restore the GOP brand to some level of respect and kick-start it out of the rut in which it otherwise languishes.

And that's the fly in the ointment. The GOP has so hurt its own credibility that even something as out-of-character for them as this won't convince a lot of folks. Doubly bad, their own ostensible standard-bearer in Sen. John McCain could very well be on the wrong side of the issue – even more cognitive dissonance.

But I honestly can't see where there is anything left to lose. President Bush is leaving in six months, the GOP brand-name is at its nadir, and if you can't go after a Democratic leadership when it has a whopping 9 percent approval rating, when can you ever do it?

The Democrats are already painting Republicans as the Grand Oil Party. I would take that and turn it on them. Just as the Founders staged the Boston Tea Party to protest a two-cent tax, we can stage the American Oil Party to tell Democrats what we think of their intransigence. And hopefully, it won't take a subsequent six-year-long war for independence to drive out some modern day King George IIIs.

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

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