Republicans and their pals in the oil and gas industry have a bit of a problem: How do you blame President Obama for driving up energy prices in America when it's not actually happening?
From Politico:
The threat of $4-a-gallon gasoline is a fast-fading memory, forcing House Republicans to shift tactics as they continue to blame President Barack Obama’s policies for driving up Americans’ energy prices. Republicans' broad agenda is largely unchanged, anchored by the Keystone XL pipeline, expanded offshore drilling, a rollback of EPA regulations and other steps they say would offer relief for consumers. But unlike the past two years, the price at the pump isn’t cooperating this time.
Instead, spring gasoline prices are at their lowest point since 2010. And all signs point to the price continuing to drop to as low as $3.20 a gallon during the summer driving season — what used to be prime time for the GOP to pound its “drill, baby drill” theme on the House floor while Democrats fretted about the possible impact at the polls.
No President, Democrat or Republican, has the ability to alter gas prices one way or the other, and the industry (and perhaps even some Republicans) are well aware of this fact. Maybe it's time for some "Don't drill for awhile, baby," chants to begin.
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Who was it here who was so tuned in to the spin and out of the real world that, during the 2012 election, he kept talking about $5 gas as if that was already the real price? Was that our little Arapgoof?
<img src="http://66.70.86.64/ChartServer/ch.gaschart?Country=Canada&Crude=f&Period=132&Areas=USA%20Average,,&Unit=US%20$/G">
No President.
I always wondered about the price cratering when it did – right around Obama's inauguration. I remember cretins on the right saying prices more than doubled on his watch. Yeah, if you treat the price on 1/20/2009 as about what prices had been, and not a six year low that followed a record high just months earlier.
Specifically, I wondered if the price crash was somehow engineered in order to allow such a meme to gain traction.
I don't think that's what happened, just in case you think I need some tinfoil for my new haberdashery project. That talking point was probably just taking advantage of a convenient fact, and it never really got legs among the mainstream electorate. (If big oil had conspired to make Obama look bad down the road, they probably also would have paid for a lot of ads driving that point home.) But it was still odd.
That was when the recession hit and for a bit spending stopped. That graph makes total sense.
I do think we'll see prices drop as we continue to find more petro resources and move more towards alternatives for both electrical generation and cars.
Also, this
Thanks the graph Dave. Too bad we don't have one correlating Republican media hysteria over the price of gas to go along with it.
Same graph silly boy.