Yesterday’s entry was about the trial balloon from Senator John Cornyn on Fox News. It floated because President Bush was beating the same drum today in a public appearance. Someone said I am too negative in this blog. Well, this entry is about good news. I believe, and you can see if my predictions are true, the Republicans will use high gasoline prices as a major campaign platform.
Both Democratic candidates are solidly on the record against any form of energy supply increases short of the so-called, yet to be discovered, renewable fuels. Neither can retrench. They are solidly aligned with global warming and have the full support of the fervid environmentalists who want no form of energy activity in this country.
President Bush is calling for drilling in Alaska, drilling offshore, new refineries,new nuclear power plants, and implementation of all forms of energy supply enhancement to increase supply and decrease foreign dependency and prices. I see McCain picking this up. The battle lines will be drawn. Voters can vote for the candidate who promises to do everything possible to reduce prices through supply increases, or the candidate who promises to increase windfall profit taxes and establish the carbon cap which will increase prices another 50 cents a gallon on gasoline. This could run across party lines since many poor people and blue collar workers can buy into the supply increase platform. Re-creating old sources of energy, now dormant, will require jobs.
This may be the first sign of a rational move to develop an energy plan that will save the economy for the short term in the US. The demand side will still need to be worked on, and we will suffer in the short term since none of this can happen overnight. But, if all the stops are pulled out we can get at this challenge in a reasonable fashion without doing serious environmental damage.
Hopefully, this will be reality and will move quickly. The Democrats will be scrambling for cover. Trying to distance themselves from the do nothing platform they’ve had for 30 years will be interesting. Let’s just examine Senator Clinton’s response to high gasoline prices. She will put a windfall profits tax on Big Oil. Exxon’s profit for the quarter was $10 billion. Less than 20% came from the USA. Let’s take 20% her most aggressive number so far, of $2 billion. That’s $400 million for the quarter. Plus, Exxon will probably try and succeed in doing more of their business overseas. Is there a logical person who can buy that this will accomplish anything to ease gas prices? How hard will it be for the Republicans to discredit this approach? Put it this way. Senator Clinton wants no energy to come from the US. But, she wants to tax any company that goes abroad and finds energy and brings it to the US. Stupid is as stupid does, per Forest Gump.
The Germans in WW2 made most of their fuel from coal. Coal gasification technology goes back that far. We could supply all of our fuel needs for the next 50 years from our domestic coal. While the state of Montana has no problem with that most of San Francisco would. Most haven’t been to Montana but they would fight the idea. I believe the Republicans have decided they won’t get the SF vote, but could beat the pants off the Democrats with a keep us going platform. Maybe they will even send Archer Daniels back the millions they have given them over the years and dump ethanol.
