Obama Breaks Trust With Support for Offshore Oil Drilling
Once upon a time, Barack Obama opposed the expansion of offshore drilling.
On the Today Show in June, Obama stated, “There is no way that allowing offshore drilling would lower gas prices right now.”
In Dayton, Ohio, on July 11, Obama explained that he opposed expanded offshore drilling because,
“The Department of Energy has acknowledged that it won’t provide short term relief. If we started drilling today, the first drop of oil wouldn’t come for another seven years. Even then it wouldn’t have a large impact on prices because it would go to a world oil market. The Chinese and the Indians, they can buy that oil just like us. You would not see any significant savings.”
Here’s a video of Obama saying just that:
But yesterday, August 1, Barack Obama announced that he had changed his position, and would now support the expansion of offshore drilling for oil.
Barack Obama knows that offshore drilling won’t help out with the current energy crisis in the American economy, so why is he supporting offshore drilling?
Sadly, it’s the polls. Barack Obama wants to attract Republican voters to his campaign, and so he is continuing his shift to the Right, away from the progressive voters who gained him the Democratic nomination. Obama is supporting offshore drilling not because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s the politically convenient thing to do at this particular moment.
We will be paying the price for his decision for a generation.
Obama is right on both the policy and politics of energy. With gasoline at four dollars per gallon, we cannot take offshore drilling off the table and the voters want it – even in Florida. Of course, we need to conserve more and develop wind, solar and biofuels but that will be only part of the solution. It makes sense to tap our own domestic supply rather than sending more of our hard-earned dollars to OPEC. Nuclear power must be expanded too. France gets the vast majority of their energy from nuclear.
WHICH Obama is right, RD?
The one who said, “The politics may have changed, but the facts haven’t. The accuracy of Senator McCain’s original position has not changed. Offshore drilling would not lower gas prices today. It would not lower gas prices tomorrow. It would not lower gas prices this year. It would not lower gas prices five years from now.”
…or, the one who embraces the policies of George W. Bush?
At the height of new production, decades from now, the new offshore drilling would reduce gasoline prices by mere pennies. Pennies, RD.
For that, you are willing to sacrifice the integrity of what you “right” people call the “Homeland”?