The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee initiated a new web-based fundraising campaign this week, pinning rising gas and energy prices on republicans. Sure, no one likes rising gas prices, but the Democratic party is practically asking to be punished with this move. Predictably, the Republican party has already thrown the issue right back in their face.
"When Republicans had the chance to protect us from high gas prices, they instead chose to oppose punishing price gougers," the DCCC claims. Actually, given that the Democrats were in power at this point, they were kind of the ones who had the chance. Not sure how they missed that. The NRCC certainly didn't, and promptly used the opportunity to point out that the democratic majority has failed to fulfill its promises. They then stepped it up a notch and named every democrat in Congress who's taking money from oil companies. Whoops!
Even if republicans had been responsible for the lack of reform in oil or energy in general, it seems rather foolish to set up the expectation that democrats could do better when there are certain factors involved in oil prices that are simply out of anyone's control. It's sort of like saying Bush was responsible for Hurricane Katrina because he didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol... sort of. In any event, while there is certainly politics involved in oil prices, there's no denying that worldwide growth is constantly increasing the demand for oil while our supply continues to shrink. Saudi Arabia is the only OPEC country able to expand its output, oil analysts say, but the oil left in its reserves is of a lower quality.
Really guys? Is this really what you want to hit the republicans on?
Incidentally, the lackluster energy bill that would increase fuel efficiency standards for cars is slowly trudging its way through Congress, no thanks to Democrat John Dingell of Michigan.
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