By all accounts, the Republican party is headed toward electoral doom in November. The GOP is almost certain to lose big in the House and there are some who are predicting a filibuster-proof dem majority in the Senate. McCain's campaign is struggling to get traction, throwing the White House in doubt as well. Two terms of George W. Bush have left the party a smoking ruin.As good as that news may seem for Democrats and liberals, there is a downside to all of this -- lame ducks have nothing to lose. Given the prospects of two Democrat-controlled branches in '09, there is no consequence at the ballot box for serving your home constituency poorly. When you're going to lose no matter what, you're free to serve your national constituency -- and, for the GOP, that's corporations.
As a result of this lemonade-from-electoral-lemons calculus, we find ourselves in the middle of a propaganda push that may be rivaled only by the BS campaign that drove us into Iraq. And, like that Iraq hard sell, the underlying subject is oil or, more specifically, serving oil companies. Faced with record high gas prices (mostly as a result of their idiotic policies), Republicans see an opportunity. They've put forth an energy plan that can be summed up in one word, "drill." And, to get those drills spinning, they've begun a campaign of the purest, most refined BS.
Think Progress:
To support the Big Oil agenda of increased offshore drilling, conservatives have been telling the American public that there weren’t any major spills caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita for an entire month. The following video shows Sen. McCain (R-AZ), Wall Street Journal writer Stephen Moore, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne, McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer, former Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), and Sen. McCain (again).
[...]
All of these people are polluter-funded, from McCain on down. As Idaho governor, Kempthorne served the interests of the energy industries that funded him. Nancy Pfotenhauer was the top D.C. lobbyist for the right-wing energy company Koch Industries, and Lott is now a lobbyist for Chevron, Shell, and the Edison Chouest Offshore drilling rig company. Stephen Moore, like Pfotenhauer, received his economics degree from George Mason University, before working at the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, then founding the Club for Growth and the Free Enterprise Fund. George Mason, Heritage, and the Cato Institute are all funded by Koch money...
[CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
