There's Votes in Them Thar Hills
BARNES, FRED
There’s Votes in Them Thar Hills Drill, McCain, drill. BY FRED BARNES For years now, John McCain has warned of the peril to America in sending $400 billion a year to foreign countries in...
...He sounds, sometimes anyway, like a liberal Democrat or a lobbyist for the environmental movement...
...Only there’s a catch: States must decide...
...want them to drill in the Grand Canyon or the Everglades...
...But congressional Republicans can attract only so much attention...
...President Bush and most Republicans want to open ANWR for drilling and have for years...
...In the Senate, minority leader Mitch McConnell has jumped on the bandwagon...
...House Republican leaders John Boehner and Roy Blunt have done an extremely effective job of connecting limits on domestic production with high gasoline prices...
...They’re willing to forgive him his apostasy on ANWR...
...They have, in effect, teed up the issue for McCain...
...It seems more like a dodge—a very un-McCainlike tactic—than a logical position...
...McCain is also a fi erce critic of oil companies, again putting him at odds with congressional Republicans...
...McCain favors increased domestic oil production, but not drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the barren area with large (and recoverable) oil reserves...
...But he doesn’t...
...I would like to give them incentives and increased revenues from oil that was recovered off the shores of Florida and California, et cetera, but being a federalist, I am not going to force them to do that,” he told Glenn Beck last month...
...So you’d think McCain would favor an unbridled effort to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil...
...More domestic oil production is not a priority...
...With gasoline at four bucks a gallon and more and money fl owing to America’s adversaries, McCain has a legitimate excuse for becoming a strong promoter of greater energy production at home...
...Republicans in Congress, however, see expanded oil production as a far safer bet for the foreseeable future, though they back development of other sources of energy too...
...But they desperately need a champion to carry their message, someone whom the national media cannot ignore...
...The offshore oil reserves and the untapped oil shale in the west have even more potential and wouldn’t require a McCain fl ip-fl op...
...He adopted the conservationist strain of his Arizona predecessor, Barry Goldwater, and was infl uenced on ANWR when he served in the House with Morris Udall, the Arizona Democrat who was something of a mentor to McCain...
...There’s an intellectual and political hole in McCain’s position, a lack of coherence that hurts both his presidential campaign and that of Republican congressional candidates...
...BY FRED BARNES For years now, John McCain has warned of the peril to America in sending $400 billion a year to foreign countries in return for oil...
...In town hall meetings, he was repeatedly asked about global warming...
...A federalist on what he regards as a grave national security threat...
...Indeed, it may be their only good domestic issue...
...There’s plenty of evidence [of other oil reserves] for him to move toward more production even if he doesn’t on ANWR...
...In McCain’s defense, he acquired his environmental leanings honestly, not opportunistically...
...Like Bush and most Republicans, McCain is a strong proponent of nuclear energy, and he often cites France’s use of nuclear power for 80 percent of its electricity as a model for America...
...He’s been loud and relentless on the subject—and wise...
...According to Blunt, “ANWR is part of the solution, but it’s not the only part...
...Except for one thing: He doesn’t go along with their approach in important ways...
...As for exploration and drilling off the Atlantic and Pacifi c coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico off Florida, McCain says that’s fi ne...
...His aides insist it’s a waste of time trying to persuade him to change his mind...
...McCain opposed that idea...
...He wouldn’t want oil companies to drill in ANWR, McCain says, “any more than I would Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...I am very angry, frankly, at the oil companies, not only because of the obscene profits they have made, but their failure to invest in alternative energy to help us eliminate our dependence on foreign oil,” he said at the town hall session in New York City...
...It’s a national security issue,” he declared last week at a town hall meeting in New York City...
...Much of the money goes to countries that “do not like us very much,” he noted...
...That’s an odd stance...
...Democrats, in contrast, oppose increased domestic oil production and sought last week (unsuccessfully) to impose a windfall profi ts tax on oil companies...
...He did and, unlike many Republicans, began to view it as a serious problem...
...Republicans have seized on public anger over $4 per gallon gasoline and are calling for domestic oil production in federal lands and offshore areas now closed to exploration and drilling...
...He wants to make oil independence “the nation’s priority...
...Since polls show the public agrees with them, Republicans believe “drilling”—the one-word capsulation of the issue—is their strongest political talking point in 2008...
...On this issue, Republicans need McCain, and he needs them...
...That was McCain’s understated way of saying the beneficiaries include Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia, countries in which anti-American forces find aid and comfort...
...A recent Gallup poll found the percentage of Americans who blame the oil companies for the spike in gasoline prices has declined dramatically...
...But he’d achieve it with nuclear power and by developing alternative sources of energy that may not come on line for decades...
...His answer was that he’d look into it...
...And that should be McCain, the Republican presidential candidate...
...But his 2000 race for the Republican presidential nomination also played a role...
...But McCain is adamant...
...Nor does he take into account the new technology that allows drilling for oil and gas in deep waters far offshore with little risk of spillage or pollution of beaches...
...In fact, he’s laid out the national security rationale for it and persuaded nearly everyone but himself...
Vol. 13 • June 2008 • No. 39
