By the way, there’s a story in here, Dick Turban has decided that he, too, ladies and gentlemen, wants to start drilling. Where is this story? Here it is, Wall Street Journal today: ‘Faced with mounting pressure from voters to respond to record gasoline prices, some senior Democratic lawmakers Tuesday opened the door to a compromise with Republicans that would open more land on and offshore to oil and gas exploration and production. Separately Tuesday, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) called on the Bush administration to draw down–‘ this is such a trick, ‘–‘a small portion’ of oil held in the government’s emergency petroleum stockpile in an effort to boost available supplies and reduce oil prices. The White House has repeatedly said it is opposed,’ to doing that, it’s a one-time thing, it’s not going to matter a hill of beans, just doing it one time. That’s Pelosi’s out. She’s trying to get people to go along with that idea rather than drill.
‘Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D., Ill.), said ‘I’m open to drilling and responsible production,’ adding that he and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, (D., Nev.), could support a modest expansion of offshore production. Sen. Durbin said any compromise on drilling, however, would be contingent at a minimum on a requirement that oil and gas companies sitting on existing acreage either produce oil on those areas within a specified period or return the leases to the government.’ What if there’s no oil there worth getting? But anyway, the drift of this and the essential part of this is, the Democrats can read polls and they see that over 60% of the American people are fed up here, and they clearly understand what it is, the laws of supply and demand, and if we had our own energy supplies or if we increased them, the overall supply of oil in the world would go up, prices would come down, and we would also be less dependent.
Now, as I said yesterday, if Republicans cannot win with these gas prices, while the Democrats have an inexperienced, arrogant, condescending, moron elitist who doesn’t understand why anybody would object to continually rising gas prices — which is going to drive up the cost of everything — then they are the latter half of dumb and dumber. This is a gold mine opportunity. You’ve got a Democrat Party presidential nominee — we can get the tape — who has said the only thing that bugs him about four-dollar gas is how fast we got there. He didn’t like the speed and the rapidity with which the price went to four dollars. Well, the Republicans continue to tell us that they can’t win, that this isn’t their year. That’s BS. This year is served up on a silver platter. Now we’ve got the Democrats wavering and caving on this because they see the reality. People vote with their pocketbooks. Democrats are on the wrong side of the biggest issue since 9/11. This is a huge, huge opportunity. An aggressive and innovative ad campaign wins this going away.
Like I was telling Snerdley yesterday, remember at the Republican convention, wherever it was, last one, last convention, the Democrats snuck somebody in there wearing a cigarette costume, they called him Butt Man, and this guy was to represent the Republicans’ tie to evil corporate interests who kill their customers. Well, fine and dandy. We could make this part of Operation Chaos. Get people dressed up as oil wells and gas pumps and walk around the Democrat National Convention, or a sandwich board in there with a gas price on it, something smart, but this is the issue. There isn’t anything else right now. Republicans ought to be all over the radio with this. Everybody in a car who has a radio is a potential target, because a car is what takes gasoline, and people in their cars are listening to radio. That’s why the Republicans need to be on the radio. How mad do you get every time you pull in, how mad do you get when you see the price? And you know that there are people who are standing in the way of doing anything about it within the economic laws of supply and demand. You don’t expect a magic wand, but you do expect some responsibility. Then you realize it’s the Democrats who want you mad; it’s the Democrats who want you suffering; it’s the Democrats that want you mad and suffering ’cause they think you’re going to blame Republicans and elect them.
Every gas station owner is a potential Republican voter. Every cabdriver, every trucker, everybody that owns a boat, anybody who drives anything is a prime target here for Republicans. All this doom and gloom and this apocalyptic stuff about their chances from the Republicans is insane. Why run around and create your own negative self-fulfilling prophecy? I understand, ‘Rush, they’re just trying to lower the expectations.’ Screw the expectations. Where is an aggressive campaign on offense about this? I mean, to me, ladies and gentlemen, I’m venting the obvious. But it just seems to me the Democrats ought to be the party on the run here. And they are. Now all of a sudden, little by little, a number of Democrats have started to change their position on offshore drilling. They are running scared! They are on the run. It’s time to take advantage of it. Need to be full of optimism for what tomorrow brings. Like I said yesterday, folks, and I thought this was quite descriptive, even for me. I often do not compliment myself ’cause it would require a lot of time. There is no shining city on a hill without domestic oil. Ronaldus Magnus, the picture image he painted of America as a shining city on a hill, there is no shining city on a hill without domestic oil, coal, gasoline, nuclear power, natural gas. See, the Democrats have no interest in a shining city, period. They’re trying to turn out the lights in the shining city because they think the shining city has been a bully, has been arrogant and offends the Europeans. So the lights are out on the shining city on a hill with the Democrats in charge of it. They’ve got the dimmers on. They would prefer a blackout of the shining city on a hill. By the way, that’s not an Obama joke.
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RUSH: A question here about these Democrats who all of a sudden are now open to the notion of offshore drilling, such as Senator Durbin, Senator Casey, Senator Collins, who’s a Republican, at least in title. I thought that the Democrat litmus test on this was that whatever we did had to lower prices tomorrow, otherwise it was a waste of time. In other words, drilling won’t lower prices tomorrow, it’s not going to affect gasoline prices tomorrow; we can’t drill. What happened to that? What the hell happened to the mantra? What the hell happened to the litmus test? That’s what The Messiah says. The Messiah, Lord Barack Obama, has not changed his position on offshore drilling. Not yet. He hasn’t, he hasn’t done so yet. It’s coming, but he’s still out there talking about it’s not going to produce any oil or gasoline tomorrow. We either do something that lowers prices tomorrow or we do nothing. This is from the people who have orgasms over raising CAFE standards 13 years in the future. Cars that won’t roll off the assembly line in 10 years, and they’re all excited about their CAFE standards.
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RUSH: . I had a story yesterday from the New York Times by Jared Allen about the Democrats, the energy bill running out of gas. And there was a line in here that I didn’t get to that I wanted to share with you. Snerdley and I were just talking about this at the top of the hour. We got all these Democrats now from Durbin to Bob Casey and others who are suggesting that they would be open to offshore drilling if it could be done smartly and all this other rotgut that they explain things with. But the dirty little secret is that all they want here is a public position of support. I guarantee you, mark my words, July 9th, 2008, at about 2:09:40 p.m, Eastern daylight time, if a bill ever gets to the Senate and the House that proposes offshore drilling, these Democrats will find something to put in it that will clear the whole thing. They are not telling us the truth. They are reading polls. They know they need to be publicly on the right side of this. So they are going to say, ‘We might be open to offshore drilling, if it’s done the right way, if it’s done the smart way,’ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, when the actual bill gets there, if one ever did, mark my words, they’ll stop it, they oppose it, they’ll put something in it to kill it, blame it on the Republicans or blame it on President Bush, say it was too drastic, too harmful, potential oil spills, all these things after having the public position of being for this.
The story here from the New York Times was titled: ”Energy Bill Out of Gas’ — House Democrats are in a bind on the focal point of their energy plan. Worried that a floor vote on any energy-related measure would trigger a Republican-forced vote on domestic drilling, the leadership has scrubbed the floor schedule of the energy legislation that it vowed to tackle after the Fourth of July recess.’ So rather than have a drilling bill actually come forth they’ve shut down the legislation because they don’t want to actually do it. The last line of the story is a quote from an aide, some Democrat, I don’t know if it’s a House aide or a Senate aide: ‘Right now our strategy on gas prices is this: Drive small cars and wait for the wind.’ And he’s being critical of his party. That’s their policy. That is exactly right. The solution to the price of gasoline, drive smaller cars and wait for the wind. That is precisely right.