National Energy Tax In Trouble?
After briefly scanning this pdf document, I’m wondering if the Democrats are finding the sale of their national energy tax more challenging than they anticipated. Here’s some information that caught my attention:
Use global warming only as a supporting story, not as the primary frame.
Awareness about global warming is broad, and some in the public are seriously concerned about it. But almost no one in our groups expressed such concern; for most voters, global warming is not significant enough on its own to drive support for major energy reform. So while it can be a part of the story that reform advocates are telling, global warming should be used only in addition to the broader economic frame, not in place of it.
For Democrats, their argument that we need a national energy tax lost its power because people aren’t buying into their ’save the planet’ theme. This is significant because that was the reason for the Democrats’ legislation. Selling this legislation as a job creation package is an uphill climb at best.
I suspect that because this Democratic administation job creation projections aren’t trustworthy. The Democrats said that they had to rush the stimulus package through before anyone read it so that we averted an economic catastrophe. President Obama said that passing ARRA would keep unemployent below 8 percent. It’s currently at 9.4 percent.
That’s before talking about the jobs saved or created nonsense. That notion has been discredited, first in the blogosphere, then on FNC, and now to the point that it’s being talked about in the Washington Post and on network TV.
Against that backdrop, the public will, at minimum, be wary of job creation numbers. I suspect that John Q. Public is suspicious of the Democrats’ employment projections.
Here’s another talking point:
Own and define “all of the above.”
Voters support the idea of doing everything possible to reform our energy, and they have shifted in their impressions of the two parties. Where Republicans once were the party of “all of the above” during the oil crisis, now voters are more likely to
associate that approach with Democrats, who they see as the party leading the efforts for reform and new, clean sources. Since Democrats own this valuable brand, they should use it to define their clean energy policies.
It’s laughable to think of the Democrats owning or defining the notion of an all of the above energy policy. I’ll slice that notion to ribbons in a nanosecond. Last summer, all of the above meant increasing drilling on the OCS. It meant conservation. It meant nuclear power. It meant increasing refining capacity.
It meant providing solutions to our energy needs. Eliminating fossil fuels isn’t possible because wind- and solar power are nice supplements to major power plants. They aren’t, and never will be, a baseline power supply.
The national energy tax is what it is. It’s a tax increase masquerading as energy policy.
This talking point is almost as silly:
Describe opposition to reform as “more of the same.”
We want to get America running on clean energy, while they want to keep doing what we’re doing and stand still.
That’s another argument they can’t win, especially when we’re telling people about the America Energy Act, which actually addresses clean energy issues without raising taxes.
Bit by bit, the Democrats’ agenda is dying. Public option health care reform is essentially dead. The Democrats’ National Energy Tax was unpalatable from the start. Now it’s just a matter of polishing these bills off and sending them to their respective graveyards.
Technorati Tags: Energy, Global Warming, Clean Energy, Stan Greenberg, Spin, Focus Groups, All of the Above, Democrats, American Energy Act, Republicans
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog