Politics

Pelosi Gets a Grilling Over Drilling

August 2008

She Can't Defend Her Party's Conduct On Oil Drilling Without Looking Ridiculous

By Andrew Peterson
For CoverUps.com

Viewers who tuned in to George Stephanopolis's This Week recently saw a train-wreck of a performance by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) in defense of her party's continued obstructionism on oil drilling.

It's surely a measure of the enormous pressure all liberal politicians and commentators must be under these days that Stephanopolis – who would normally be expected to give someone like Pelosi a soft-ball interview – gave her a real grilling on the subject of Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) drilling. It was both a pleasure and quite painful to watch.

Some politicians dodge and dissemble better than others. Dissembling is not Pelosi's strong suit here – at least not on this topic. Given the abject weakness of the hand she had to play it's hard to imagine even a master con artist like Bill Clinton performing well in this interview. There is simply no excuse for Ms. Pelosi's refusal to allow an up-or-down vote on drilling.

As Stephanopolis pressed her over and over to explain her position, all The Speaker of the House could manage was a pathetic rummaging through every cliche in the liberal playbook.

It wasn't the Democrats' fault. It was those two evil oilmen in the White House.

(Never mind that President Bush had already done his part and rescinded the Executive Order banning OCS drilling passed by his father in the late 1980s).

The Democrats had already offered a good-faith proposal to siphon off oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

(Even though it represents only a tiny fraction of the oil available in the OCS, and was never intended to be anything but a stopgap in case of a real emergency.)

The benefits of OCS oil drilling are tiny, and years away.

(Even though we've already had a sizeable benefit in pump prices just from President Bush's lifting of the Executive Order, a move that speculators took as a sign that the U.S. was finally serious about solving its energy supply problem. We've already seen, just in the week or since then, a drop in price far greater than what the Democrats dismissively claim it will be in the long run. Unleaded has dropped below $4 at some stations in Southern California for the first time inmonths. Not that Pelosi would notice. She doesn't pay for her own gas. We do.)

And there was the usual tiresome call for wind and solar – solutions that are decades away.

All in all it was a truly desperate and pathetic performance by Ms. Pelosi. We've saved the best (actually the worst) of her appearance for last. What lame Democrat excuse for obstructionism on energy would be complete without trotting out the sacred cows of global warming and "saving the planet".  You see, ladies and germs, Ms. Pelosi is only denying us relief at the gas pumps to save the planet. How dare we accuse her of being the handmaiden of the radical environmental lobby. Why, if she were to allow a vote on drilling, the atmosphere would probably spontaneously combust because of all those new rigs out there in the gulf!

The horror. The horror.

We can only wonder why Ms. Pelosi bothered to go on George's show. Did she really think any of her enviro-drivel would take the head off her? Her performance only served to fan the flames of outrage which have already swept the country. Come to think of it, that's the kind of global warming we can live with.

Link to article.