GOP’s disastrous energy plan

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:45:00 +0000

You wouldn't know from the energy section in the Republican Party's 2012 platform that President Obama will be the first president since Lyndon Johnson to preside over four consecutive years of growing domestic oil production. That's not the kind of news the GOP wants to promote, since it gets in the way of the party's efforts to portray Obama as an implacable foe of fossil fuels and oil companies.

But that's hardly the only thing you wouldn't know about energy from the GOP platform. Some highlights:

The platform complains that the price of a gallon of gas has doubled since Obama became president. But there's no acknowledgment of the fact that the primary reason the price of gas was low when Obama entered the White House was the crippling, demand-crushing global economic crash that forced gas prices down from their record highs during the final year of George W. Bush's administration.
The platform decries Obama's "war on coal" but doesn't mention that the No. 1 reason why coal-fired energy plants are closing down, and plans to build new ones are moribund, has to do with price competition from cheap natural gas.
The platform declares that Republicans will not "pick winners and losers in the energy market-place" but will instead "let the free market and the public’s preferences determine the industry outcomes." But strangely, the platform does not advocate ending tax breaks for the oil industry or stopping the practice of loan guarantees to the nuclear power industry.

Salon.com > GOP Platform

GOP’s disastrous energy plan