Has McCain Found His Issue?

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John McCain's task in this election is a daunting one. Some of the impediments he faces are:

1. The fact his party is in extreme disfavor with the public


2. He is of the party of an unpopular President finishing his second term leaving a struggling economy


3. He will be facing an opponent the press loves


4. He will be facing a much better funded opponent


5. His base is unenthusiastic about his candidacy


6. He's old


7. Etc

But he does have a possible ace up his sleeve if he's willing to use it and there seem to be more signs every day that he just might be. Yesterday came this story announcing that he called for:

...the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 and pledged $2 billion a year in federal funds "to make clean coal a reality," measures designed to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

In a third straight day of campaigning devoted to the energy issue, the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting also said the only time Democratic rival Barack Obama voted for a tax cut was for a "break for the oil companies."

McCain said the 104 nuclear reactors currently operating around the country produce about 20 percent of the nation's annual electricity needs.

"Every year, these reactors alone spare the atmosphere from the equivalent of nearly all auto emissions in America. Yet for all these benefits, we have not broken ground on a single nuclear plant in over thirty years," he said. "And our manufacturing base to even construct these plants is almost gone."

Coupled with his recent announcement of being in favor of additional offshore drilling McCain is starting to look serious about an issue that is top of mind for a large segment of the population. According to a recent CBS poll Gas/Heating oil is second only to Economy/Jobs as the most important problem facing this country today (and an argument can be made that energy and the economy are really part of the same issue).

The advantages of taking this pro-active, pro-American initiative line are numerous.

1. It isn't pie in the sky. It will work to bring energy prices down. As soon as the market understands that more oil will be coming online even if it will be some years down the road the price of oil will begin to drop. And a belief that more nuclear power will be added to America's energy mix will have the same effect.

2. Barack Obama can't mimic McCain. As this story points out:

A recent report by the Interior Department shows that there are about 139 billion barrels of undiscovered oil on U.S. territory, onshore and offshore combined, much of it restricted from extraction because of environmental regulations. Further, indications are that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) does not support drilling for that oil and would not take steps to do so if elected president.

On Monday, President Bush called on Congress to allow the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and the Continental Shelf to be opened to domestic oil drilling -- something that would "help us through this difficult period" of $4 per gallon gasoline, he said.

Since entering the Senate, however, Obama has co-sponsored at least 100 pieces of legislation supported by environmentalists, including measures against further domestic oil drilling. He has voted against drilling in ANWR and against an oil leasing program also set for ANWR.

Obama explained why he opposed domestic oil drilling in his bestselling book, "The Audacity of Hope."

"We cannot drill our way out of the problem," Obama wrote, adding, "over the last 30 years, countries like Brazil have used a mix of regulation and direct government investment to develop a bio-fuel industry; 70 percent of its new vehicles run on sugar-based ethanol."

In a Sept. 2005 speech in Indianapolis, Obama further stated his opposition to expanded oil drilling.

"We could open up every square inch of America to drilling and we still wouldn't even make a dent in our oil dependency," he said. "We could open up ANWR today, and at its peak, which would be more than a decade from now, it would give us enough oil to take care of our transportation needs for about a month. Clearly, this is not a solution."

It isn't merely that he's made statements opposing drilling in the past - God knows that violating his word is not a major concern for Obama as his violating his previous policy on public financing of his campaign shows) but he can't afford to alienate the Environmental extremists who have been major supporters. Yesterday the Sierra Club endorsed Obama and most other environmental groups are likely to do the same. He won't risk their ire. So as McCain's position becomes better known and gains him some traction, Obama is stuck making excuses.

Also if McCain would finally reevaluate his position on drilling in ANWR, a place which he still persists in believing is some sort of Grand Canyon-like pristine wonderland (Its not. Swamp in the summer; tundra in the winter. See photo below) he could go a long way in warming up those conservatives who remain hostile to him, a significant portion of whom may choose to "sit this one out" unless McCain does something to make them happy. ANWR may just be that warm bath they're looking for.

John McCain is not going to have an easy time winning this election but a full-bore push to cut energy prices by making the US more independent of Arab oil could go a long way in accomplishing that end.

Blogs For John McCain is encourage as well

Just Average American comments

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air also notes the opportunity for McCain

The Opinion Blog notes Charles Krauthammer's column on this issue

Let's See, Oil Prices Are High. What To Do? What To Do? Wait A Second, I Know! Drill Dammit! Drill!

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While John McCain is blowing his chance to capitalize on possibly the biggest issue of the upcoming election - high oil prices - at least Republicans in the House (of all places!) are doing the right and smart thing. Michelle Malkin cites USA Today that:

Supporters of a proposal to allow drilling for oil and gas off the U.S. coastline are expected to make their case to a House panel Wednesday.

Offshore oil and gas production has been banned off most of the U.S. coastline since Congress approved the Outer Continental Shelf moratorium in 1981, which prevented the leasing of coastal waters for fossil fuel development.

Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., wants to change that with an amendment to the Interior Department spending bill to be considered by a House Appropriations subcommittee. The amendment would lift the prohibition on exploration 50 to 200 miles offshore but continue to ban drilling within 50 miles of the coastline.

“For 27 years, Congress has deliberately locked-up vast offshore oil and natural gas reserves,” Peterson said. “With the price at the pump increasing daily — with no end in sight — and the cost of natural gas trading at record levels, Congress needs to unlock these reserves.”

He cites estimates from the Minerals Management Service that there are 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas located offshore.

The bill later went down to defeat along party lines, Republicans all in favor of drilling, Dems against. This is the kind of common sense issue that would easily resonate with voters. Sadly standard bearer McCain is squishy on offshore drilling and no better than the head of the Sierra Club when it comes to drilling in ANWR, apparently mistaking that tundra-covered hellhole in Alaska for the majesty of the Grand Canyon.

Although it escapes the two major party candidates for President the American people are sharp enough to understand that if we are being jerked around over the issue of foreign oil it makes a helluva lot of sense to drill for our own instead.

Malkin goes on to cite the WSJ that:

A century and a half after oil production began, there is ample evidence that a lot of oil — and natural gas — remains to be found in the U.S. and its territorial waters. Some of those areas are wide open to oil companies, including most of the Gulf of Mexico where deep-water floating rigs now routinely drill wells hundreds of miles from shore. Even in the gulf, areas are off limits, including most of the waters off the Florida coast. The entire East and West Coasts are off limits for new drilling.

The US has a huge amount of oil that remains currently untapped. The Bakken Formation in Montana and North Dakota alone is hugely rich in oil.

In April 2008, a report issued by the state of North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources estimated that the North Dakota portion of the Bakken contained 167 billion barrels of oil[9].

Due to their thisclose relationship with the radical environmental movement the Dems are in no position to exploit this opening. A May Gallup poll shows that 57% of Americans favor drilling in coastal and wilderness areas. If the Republicans in Congress can get their thick-headed Presidential candidate on board they'd be able to speak very appealingly with one voice to the American people on an issue that has mass appeal and is good policy, too.

A Newt One discusses

Bear Creek Ledger does as well

So too The Cassandra Page

Pointing Fingers While Sitting On Their Hands - The Dem' Magical Method Of NOT Dealing With High Energy Costs

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Last week's Freudian slip by Maxine Water's was wonderful to behold as it always is when Liberal's inadvertently reveal their real agenda but what was not so wonderful was the sham forum in which it took place. Faced with an American public increasingly angry at ever rising gas and oil prices the Democrat led Congress did what it usually does; it called in the top executives of the major oil companies for a little bashing. Senator Herb Kohl, did what Dems love to do: bashed success.

"Your industry has no problem doubling your profits, tripling your profits, even when prices at the pump go crazy," he said. "You have no problem keeping up with your increasing profits. It just doesn't seem fair, guys. It just doesn't seem fair."

Kohl would apparently be much happier if the oil companies were on the skids. How exactly this would improve the lives of their employees and stockholders is uncertain. But the whole call-the-"culprits"-up-before-Congress thing is really nothing more than a feint in the first place, meant to divert the public's attention away from Congress' own failings.

The suggestions of price fixing and "greedy oil executives" fits the Dems' and their PR adjunct, the msm's narrative but does nothing to explain the real reason gas prices are high and apparently going higher. The are a number of reasons for this price spike but capitalist greed isn't really one of them.

Steve Schippert does a good job of getting to the nitty gritty of the problem here:

Has Asian growth accounted for a 500% increase in demand? Hardly. Has the supply dropped by 500%? No. Have both factors combined for a 500% increase metric? Not even close.

What gives? The answer is precisely what OPEC says: Frantic speculation on tomorrow’s supply, compounded daily, and geo-political events that have driven this hysterical perception.

So convinced are our markets today that tomorrow’s supply is going to evaporate, we place a crisis value on today’s barrel. Tomorrow, we are surely even closer to fossil fuel doom and thus that day’s barrel will be even more critical than the day before. Lather, rinse, repeat. $132 per barrel crude prices are returned from the calculus. Yet, it’s basic math dictated less by true supply and demand and much more on the hysterical perceptions of the same.

We have become oil hypochondriacs. We are so convinced that we have cancer, it has inevitably appeared on our psychosomatic charts. So assured are we that doom awaits in perpetuity that we drive our own listing ship fearing that it will list port side any moment now.

How to address this perceptual problem, then? Well, this is just the question the Dems don't want you to ask. The fact is that there is an enormous amount of oil lying under US soil, enough that if it were allowed to be exploited it would go a long way toward alleviating oil supply fears. But at a time when Americans are champing at the bit for more energy independence the Democrat Congress is standing in the way everywhere it can.

During his Presidency Bill Clinton argued that allowing drilling in ANWR, a tundra blanketed wasteland that environmentalists seem to visualize as some green Valhalla, would take a decade to start producing oil if drilling were allowed, so wasn't worth the effort. If the drilling had gone forward then we'd now have a million more barrels a day at our disposal and would need to depend on foreign oil less. Cal Thomas, in a recent column makes the point more broadly:

[Peter Robertson, vice chairman of Chevron] said there would be plenty of oil available to the United States if the oil companies were allowed to get it: "Eighty-five percent of offshore oil is off-limits." Responding to objections to offshore drilling by environmentalists and their allies in Congress, Robertson noted that some of the strongest pro-environment nations in Europe - he mentions Denmark, Norway, the United Kingdom - lease offshore locations for oil exploration. The technology has become so good, he said, that during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, "one thousand offshore wells were destroyed (in the Gulf of Mexico), but not one leaked." Australia, he said, has allowed offshore drilling for 40 years without any environmental damage.

The heavy hand of government is also felt in the different regulations that apply to oil from one locality to another, resulting in difficulty in using oil from one area in another as oil that is up to spec in Arizona may not meet Colorado's standards.


Why the price of oil is what it is is complicated and while all the reasons haven't been touched on here, the main point remains valid: We do not have to be as dependent on foreign oil as we are today and oil prices would not be as high as they are today if liberals in Congress got out of the way and just let the "villainous" oil companies drill where they see fit and refine as they see fit. The Congress does not want to American public to catch wind of this reality so they call in oil execs and try to scapegoat them.

In another legitimately entertaining bit of responsibility-dodging Mark Steyn has pointed out how Congress just passed the...

so-called NOPEC bill. The NOPEC bill is, in effect, a suit against OPEC, which, if I recall correctly, stands for the Oil Price-Exploiting Club. “No War For Oil!,” as the bumper stickers say. But a massive suit for oil — now that’s the American way!

“It shall be illegal and a violation of this Act,” declared the House of Representatives, “to limit the production or distribution of oil, natural gas, or any other petroleum product… or to otherwise take any action in restraint of trade for oil, natural gas, or any petroleum product when such action, combination, or collective action has a direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect on the market, supply, price, or distribution of oil, natural gas, or other petroleum product in the United States.”

Er, okay. But, before we start suing distant sheikhs in exotic lands for violating the NOPEC act, why don’t we start by suing Congress? After all, who “limits the production or distribution of oil” right here in the United States by declaring that there’ll be no drilling in the Gulf of Florida or the Arctic National Mosquito Refuge? As Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz herself told Neil Cavuto on Fox News, “We can’t drill our way out of this problem.”

That Congressional finger that our liberal legislators like to point at everybody else should turn around and point to the real culprit in this situation: Congress itself.