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Feature Story, continued…
All hail, Your Majesty! We humble commoners are wondering: Why did you turn off the lights, cameras, and microphones in the “People’s House” when elected members wanted to discuss relief for your struggling subjects who were paying record prices at the gas pump?
“I’m trying to save the planet!”
I see, Madame Speaker, your book, Know Your Power, has been struggling to reach as high as Number 1000 on the best-seller list. Hmm. “Know your power.” Does that mean shutting off microphones when others want to speak?
“I’m trying to save the planet. I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuses for their failed policy.”
Dear me! This sounds serious, Your Majesty. We just stopped ten people on the street at random, and not a single one of them spoke in favor of policies that fail. As they were filling their gas tanks (to the extent they could afford to), they were convinced that it was our nation’s energy policy that had “failed.” Oh, wait! Isn’t that the 34-year congressionally-imposed ban on drilling for energy on the Outer Continental Shelf – you know, the policy that you want to prevent from expiring next month as scheduled?
“What you saw this week in the Congress was the war dance of the handmaidens of the oil companies.”
Oh, I get it, Your Majesty. We can’t have the evil oil company investors – pensioners including retired firemen, teachers, policemen, service employees, widows, middle-class 401K retirement fund investors – getting away with drilling for oil so that Joe and Jane Six-Pack can drive to the beach for their two-week vacations. Why, we can’t let those “handmaidens of the oil companies” get away with such impudent effrontery.
“I will not give up this gavel.”
Oh, heaven forefend, Your Majesty. In fact, that was the gist of what Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah told President Bush when the president, as the leader of the world’s only superpower, begged him – hat in hand – to drill for more oil so we won’t have to. In polite language, the Middle East potentate told the leader of the free world, “Go away, ya bother me.” Your Majesty, when the barbarians at the gate say drill for oil, what shall we tell them? Let them eat cake?
Same thing: “I won’t give up this gavel” (this throne).
All rise! Queen Nancy’s limousine awaits – running on fumes (we assume), and ready to whisk Her Highness off to her next book interview. You really have to “know your power” to write a boring book that hits the cellar.
The fight goes on
It is not as if the Republican lawmakers who tried to deliver their five-minute energy-independence speeches on the House floor were out-of-order when Her Highness turned off the microphones, shooed away the C-SPAN camera crews, and turned off the lights while Members of Congress were speaking. It is traditional that lawmakers can make five-minute speeches just as Congress is about to adjourn for a hiatus. But the 21st century Marie Antoinette would have none of it. As one of the Queen’s reporters was booted out of the Speaker’s Lobby (where they page members for interviews), one of the Pelosi palace guards said, “You’re not covering this, are you?” Sort of like the threatening code language all too familiar to the eunuchs who wrote for Pravda.
John Gizzi of Human Events says Pelosi apparently wanted to shut down the House media galleries, but House rules say those galleries must be open if just one member is on the House floor. This is America, where even self-anointed royalty is expected to observe the rules that apply to you and me.
Pelosi “answers”
Since our “interview” with Speaker Pelosi at the outset (italicizing answers she has publicly given to the same issues in other venues), her office has e-mailed some of her talking points regarding the GOP House members’ pro-drilling talkathon. The Heritage Foundation’s Rob Bluey – by training an intrepid reporter who is like a dog with a bone once he sinks his teeth into a story – has practically lived on Capitol Hill during the GOP House revolt against taking the five-week vacation without offering relief to beleaguered Americans paying dearly to fill up their gas tanks.
Bluey has shared Pelosi’s comments with me, as well as Heritage’s answers.
Madame Speaker claims her Democrats have pushed alternatives – such as subsidies or tax incentives to the renewable energy industry and requiring the oil companies to drill on 68 million acres they already control.
A: Renewables are 7% of America’s energy consumption. Without hydropower, it’s at 4%. Remember, the “freeze in the dark” lobby that has the Democrats on a short leash wants “no anything,” including dams. B: One fly in the ointment with the “68 million acres” is that there’s no oil there. Drilling for oil only where, in fact, oil exists is – duh! – customary?
What about releasing some oil from strategic petroleum reserves? A three-day solution at best. When it’s used up, the prices go up again and we’re with less oil in case of a national emergency, such as a terrorist attack or a nuclear-armed Iran that doesn’t want to sell us oil anymore. That the Speaker of the House is sliding on thin political ice, on the other hand, does not constitute a national emergency of similar magnitude.
Talkathon timetable
The Republicans, still reeling from their 2006 defeat, have been lagging badly in the polls and also lagging in morale.
Now comes an issue that has rejuvenated them somewhat. The Democrats have their backs to the wall. Democrat lawmakers in conservative districts who were elected on campaign rhetoric well to the right of Pelosi are pressuring the speaker to let them vote on drilling for more oil.
In fact, there are some 15 to 20 Democrats trying to get a pro-drilling bill to the floor. Bluey says they’re frothing at the mouth because they can’t get a vote but are getting plenty of heat back home. Pelosi, safe in her San Francisco environs, tells them they can tell their constituents to blame her for the lack of an up-or-down vote. Such fakery does not sell, and stands as a classic example of why so many Americans hate politics.
Estimates as to how many Democrat congressmen would vote in favor of drilling – if given the chance – are impressive but vary widely: anywhere from 75 to as high as 150. Of course, they are not joining Republicans who are raising the roof in an officially-adjourned House. That is more leeway than Queen Nancy would allow.
But the GOP lawmakers intend to continue the talkathon at least until August 22 – just before the Democrat National Convention in Denver.
Ah! But will the stupid party rescue the evil party – again?
Now, in watching all this, the political odds-makers can be forgiven for saying, “We don’t know how they’ll accomplish it, but somehow, our Republican friends will find a way to mess this up.”
Bingo!
Sure enough, the Senate surrender-bund to the rescue!
Kimberly Strassel nailed it in the Wall Street Journal.
“It was probably too much to assume” that someone somewhere amongst Washington Republicans would not drop the ball on this and hand the Democrats a political life raft, notes Strassel.
“In stumbled [Republican] Sens. Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Saxby Chambliss, Bob Corker, and Johnny Isakson – along with five Senate Democrats” – with a “bipartisan” energy plan that Strassel describes as “a Democratic giveaway” whose “regulatory hurdles [to drilling] are huge.”
House members who have been doing the heavy lifting in trying to break the Pelosi politburo’s stranglehold on oil production are not falling for the Senate’s “Tepid Ten” – as House Republican Policy Chairman Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) refers to them.
In a statement e-mailed to this column, McCotter said the “scheme” is “ill-advised and injurious to America’s energy future.”
Senator’s defense
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) phoned in to the Rush Limbaugh show to defend the “Tepid Ten” against Rush’s sharp criticism. Rush was very courteous and thanked Senator Chambliss for his call, but stuck to his critique.
Where you come in
Americans need to keep the heat on House Democrats to tell Pelosi that just putting the blame on her won’t fly. They need to know their power and tell the Queen Bee that this is the People’s House, not hers. They need to encourage House Republicans to keep up the fight. And don’t forget the ban on offshore drilling expires September 30. House Republican Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) says Pelosi would be foolish to insist on renewing the drilling ban. Keep the heat on.
Wes Vernon is a Washington-based writer and veteran broadcast journalist.
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