Posted on 07/16/2008 11:20:37 AM PDT by mnehring
It was a Friday, the last day of October and four days before the presidential election of 1992 when ignominious special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh handed down a scurrilous indictment of Cap Weinberger, former Secretary of Defense. The ensuing media explosion dominated the news until election day and was a final humiliation of the beleaguered Bush administration enmeshed in a campaign grossly mismanaged by James Baker, undermined by Ross Perot and outsmarted by Bill Clinton. When it happens to your own father, you don’t easily forget the value of timing.
Hence the White House announcement yesterday concerning drilling on government controlled property. The annual renewal of the ban on offshore drilling was in no small irony the product of the President’s father’s administration and hailed by his younger brother, Jeb. Crude oil hovered around $20/bbl. and Saddam had yet to roll his tanks into Kuwait City.
President Bush has put the Democrats in Congress on the hotseat with this move and the deadline to annually renew their own ban expires exactly 36 days before the election. They will be forced to vote within the ever-shrinking short term memory of the electorate and their attempts to justify their actions, however they vote, are going to be vastly entertaining and most likely publicly embarassing.
John Hinderaker, of Power Line, quotes the President of the Institute for Energy Research, Thomas Pyle, who writes, ” Most Americans understand the law of supply and demand, but they may not know that America is the only developed nation in the world that restricts access to its own offshore energy resources, or that an annual vote in Congress is required to continue that policy. ”
I agree with Hinderaker the Democrats will probably cave to not renewing the ban in hopes their fallback strategy of encouraging and abetting the obstruction of exploration and drilling will be successfully fought by the formidable establishment of environmentalists and their lawyers in the courts of the United States. But the pressure is on to change the legal landscape and put the anti-drilling factions on the defense. It was a very shrewd and calculated political move on the part of George Bush and he deserves the credit he is due.
I agree with the shrewdness of Bush’s move. Whether Congress removes the ban remains to be seen, but I have doubts they’ll buck public pressure.
What remains to be seen is what the Greens & others do in the courts. With the bans removed, do they have president to stand on?
Politics - it’s not just the position but the timing of your actions that matter. Too many here at FR are “do it all NOW!” type folks, and don’t understand that the same action delayed a bit can be dramatically more effective...
The timing is indeed sweet!
Indeed. President Bush, the head of the Republican Party, played this card at exactly the right time!
Ah, double entendre. That's great. But if Obama gets in come November, Bush's ban will shortly be canceled. That's one thing I do know.
Better yet, make her do what we in private industry do - use telephones, video conferences, e-mail, instant messaging, etc. Speaker Pelosi and the entire Congress do NOT have to meet in DC; they can meet virtually 99% of the time.
Think of all the driving and flying that could be eliminated if we actually modernized the Congress!
Very true.
But, your response was cutesy!
Pelosi didn't say that. That alleged quote came from a John Semmons satire here.
These asshats are crying because BIG OIL has leases for a piddly 65 million acres? The United States, just land alone, is 2.26 BILLION acres. The lands that are being leased total 2.8% of the U.S!
Strategerie.
Reference for Pelosi quote in post 7
Not exactly, they don't want us to stay home, nor do they want to completely destroy our economy. What they want is control. They want us to be dependent on them. They want us to get out of the house, but they want to do it on their terms, through public transportation. They don't want to completely destroy the economy, they want to run it in order to channel it to themselves. Most importantly, they want to establish a society dependent on them so they continue to keep power. The worst thing for liberals is a financially clear, independent minded individual.
See my post #13.
The Dems are in a bind. If they don’t lift the ban, they’re going to lose lots of votes in the presidential and congressional races.
If they do lift the ban, the nutjobs on the far left will be ticked off big time. Either way, they lose.
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