Voters Say ‘Drill’

by Larry Kudlow - June 10th, 2008 - National Review (Online)

Recent polling data from Gallup show the percentage of voters blaming oil companies for skyrocketing gasoline prices has dropped from 34 percent to 20 percent over the past year. At the same time, support for more drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas has increased to 57 percent from 41 percent.

And the candidates remain blind to these shifts.

Obama continues to lambaste oil companies while congressional Democrats push for cap-and-trade. They’re missing the point, big time. The public wants more energy and more fuel to cut high prices and spur economic growth. But the costly cap-and-trade plan would produce less fuel and less growth. It would only raise gas pump prices while mounting a Gosplan-type taxing, spending, and regulating program that would be the moral equivalent of Hillarycare on nationalized medicine.

Sen. McCain has an opening here. Yet he, like Obama, would have voted for cap-and-trade, which went down to defeat in last week’s Senate vote. And while Mr. McCain favors some off-shore production and has been strong on nuclear development, he is against drilling in ANWR Alaska.

Then there’s the oil nobody is talking about. The Bakken fields beneath North Dakota, Montana, and Canada hold an estimated 400 billion barrels of oil. In comparison, Saudi Arabia’s biggest field, Gahawar, has an estimated 55 billion barrels, while ANWR has an estimated 10.4 billion barrels.

This is interesting. The long term issues that are facing America are the economic devastation that cap and trade will impose on our nation and the impact to our future if the middle east is controlled by the Islamo-fascists. The American people have figured out the right answer . . .DRILL NOW. Neither of the candidates for President are supportive of what the American people want.

This article asks the right question. Considering how much more malleable Obama is than McCain, will he adjust his campaign rhetoric first and steal this issue from the slow witted and inflexible McCain?