Offshore Drilling

Nothing clarifies the mind more than the prospect of $5-a-gallon gasoline.

John McCain’s position has evolved on offshore drilling. He was for a moratorium. Now he is for lifting the moratorium.

McCain evolved because he can. Obama doesn’t have that luxury. He is stuck with the wind-and-sun crowd, whose chief responses to the looming gas crisis are to cheer quietly, threaten a windfall profits tax and call for measures that will put all the Detroit autoworkers out of work.

That McCain’s evolution is smart politics is proven by the reaction of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R). He supports McCain. Crist is a pretty savvy politician and he knows what the people in Florida want. Right now, they want relief from staggeringly high gas prices.

Can we drill in an environmentally safe way? Of course we can. Will we? Not if the Democrats have anything to say about the matter.

About 90 percent of all Democrats vote consistently against the domestic production and exploration of our oil resources, while about 90 percent of Republicans vote for it. Those have been the rough numbers over the last decade.

It will be interesting to see if those numbers creep down on the Democratic side in the next couple of months.

It is starting to get pretty hot in the kitchen. While House Democrats have smugly concluded that they don’t have to do anything to keep the majority, especially on gas prices, the voters are getting more and more agitated. That is good news for congressional Republicans.

It is also good for John McCain, who may get some grief from the news media for changing his mind on this issue, but he shouldn’t worry about that. He should worry about what the American people want. And they want some relief from high gas prices and a plan to get more of our oil in the marketplace. Obama can’t go there. McCain can. So McCain does and Obama won’t. The people agree with McCain.

The latest polls show McCain and Obama in a dead heat. By all measures, Obama should be at least at Mike Dukakis numbers (Dukakis was up in the high double digits at this point in the election campaign). But on issues like gas prices and taxes, Obama is out of touch with what most Americans want (lower gas prices and lower taxes).

McCain has won another round when it comes to offshore drilling. It is going to be a long summer for Barack Obama.

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