California Conservative

I just finished participating in a blogger conference call on energy policy. The conference call was hosted by Rep. Michele Bachmann and was attended by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Rep. Eric Cantor, Rep. Phil Gingrey, Rep. Tom Price, and Rep. Adam Putnam. Here’s a brief summary of what each of these representatives said in their opening statements:

Marsha Blackburn: What we are faced with is a classic supply-demand situation, windfall profits tax didn’t work. Clinton vetoed ANWR drilling, saying that it’d be “10 years before we see any production.”
Adam Putnam: “These are our solutions” “We’re committed to an all of the above approach” on energy.
Tom Price: High gas price is #1 issue in northern Atlanta. “We need to incentive conservation.” “We need to increase oil production.” “I’m sure that Speaker Pelosi’s constituents aren’t interested in paying $4.68 a gallon.”
Phil Gingrey: DOD will see a $9 billion increase in fuel expense.” They installed a provision in the DOD bill that mandated the buying certain type of crude oil, essentially eliminating Canadian oil & shale oil.
Eric Cantor: “We’re opening up democracy” by including bloggers, who are driving this conversation. Speculative markets are looking at how we’re dealing with supply. Currently, that’s driving prices up. “Barack Obama recently said that” the only problem with $4 gas is that it went up too fast.

Several representatives spoke to the differences between McCain and Obama, which I thought was fair game. My representative, Michele Bachmann, is collecting gas receipts and will deliver them to Speaker Pelosi’s door, telling her that real people are hurting because of high gas prices. Michele also talked about the Cap and Tax Bill that got defeated in the Senate. Her nickname for the bill was the Cap and Spend bill, which I thought was appropriate, too. (I still prefer my nickname better, though.)

One thing that I’m certain of is that this converstaion won’t disappear before Election Day. Democrats want to do anything they can to avoid having this debate but it ain’t going away because the blogosphere won’t let it disappear. As Rep. Cantor said, bloggers are driving this conversation. He noted in one of his responses that he gets emails all the time from people saying that they read something about the gas crisis on the blogs. Based on what I heard today, it’s obvious that House Republicans will push this issue hard, too.

This is such a clear winner for the GOP that Dick Morris wrote this about the issue:

With gas prices nearing $5, all of the previous shibboleths need to be discarded. Where once voters in swing states like Florida opposed offshore drilling, the high gas prices are prompting them to reconsider. McCain’s argument that even hurricane Katrina did not cause any oil spills from the offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico certainly will go far to allay the fears of the average voter.

I’ve never been convinced that voters bought into the notion of manmade global warming. Now that gas has reached this price, few people think that ‘the environment’ is a big enough concern to prevent oil companies from oil exploration on the OCS.

While it’s true that McCain still doesn’t support drilling in ANWR, most voters and bloggers understand that opening up the OCS and parts of the Mountain West for shale oil exploration is enough to drive prices down in the near future.

Technorati Tags: Gas Crisis, Blogger Conference Call, Adam Putnam, Tom Price, Eric Cantor, Phil Gingrey, Marsha Blackburn, Michele Bachmann, Outer Continental Shelf, Oil Exploration, Obama, McCain, Nancy Pelosi, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Blogging, Economy, Election 2008, Environment, McCain, Obama, Pelosi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.