In a recent column about Democrats’ dubious claim to any political advantage over “affordability,” we noted that while the opposition party’s approach to exploiting elevated fuel costs for political advantage is a strategic layup, it’s a noncredible and incoherent policy position.
As Democrats film “commercials in front of gas stations, voters ought to remember that higher energy costs is their stated policy goal,” we wrote. “They’re bellyaching about prices as a means to regain power, but the policies they pursue with said power are often explicitly anti-energy.”
One example we cited was former President Barack Obama’s years-old admission that his energy agenda would cause energy costs to “necessarily skyrocket” by design. Obama is now actively campaigning for one of the most extreme Democratic Senate nominees in the country, Michigan’s Abdul el Sayed.
An ad the former president cut promotes the candidate’s fraudulent and misleading “money out of politics” bona fides — which is utterly shameless, given Obama’s own breathtakingly hypocritical track record on that subject.
El Sayed’s views on energy are highly relevant to the “affordability” debate, which he leans into at every opportunity. Indeed, when a female reporter asked him about his own comments regarding Iran, el Sayed bristled, demanded that she ask “smart questions,” and insisted that they instead “talk about gas prices.”
What he means by that, presumably, is that he wants to posture about pain at the pump in order to attain political power. Voters want relief, so posing as the alternative to a frustrating status quo is an obvious move.
But again, el Sayed and his fellow partisans favor high energy costs. It’s their goal. It’s why blue states have the highest gas prices in the country, thanks to various taxes and punitive actions against the Big Oil bogeyman, the costs of which are directly passed on to consumers.
El Sayed may find electoral utility in whining about gas and diesel prices for a few more weeks, but he’s amassed a long track record of taking positions that are aggressively — and very expensively — anti-energy.
In a video montage assembled by Republican strategists, el Sayed is repeatedly shown staking out numerous policy views (during his failed gubernatorial campaign and more recently) that would explode Americans’ energy bills and dramatically harm their way of life.
He expressed his “commitment” to moving Michigan to “100% renewable energy,” which may be an appealing talking point but would be quite costly in practice. We’ve seen this with enormously expensive subsidies and mandates everywhere this vision has been attempted.
He effectively called for shutting down the oil companies, name-checking several examples of these entities and declaring that they should not “continue to exist.” For the foreseeable future, this is a ludicrous and damaging fantasy that would spike costs, massively constrict supply, and rip away many thousands of jobs (while inevitably impacting millions more).
El Sayed endorsed the economically ruinous and implausible Green New Deal, which has an estimated price tag in the tens of trillions of dollars. That money would have to come from somewhere, as would the tens of trillions of dollars his self-described “government takeover” of the entire healthcare system would cost.
These programs would explode the already unsustainable national debt while inflicting widespread disruption on the people, well beyond the catastrophic, across-the-board tax increases that would be required to pay even a portion of the total cost.
He called the left-wing Green New Deal “extremely powerful” and a “sweeping change” that must be “harnessed and invested in.” It would be a sweeping change, all right, and it would crush family and small business budgets. This is the policy objective of many of these candidates pretending to empathize with discontent over gas prices.
Lest there be any doubt about el Sayed’s commitment to the unfathomably expensive and unworkable Green New Deal, he tweeted about his support, writing “I BELIEVE IN A GREEN NEW DEAL” five times in a row, capped off with the hashtag #GlobalClimateStrike.
The Democrat also made clear that he’s opposed to transporting fossil fuels in any way, including via pipelines. “I do not believe that we need to be investing in moving fossil fuels,” he told an interviewer.
Another interlocutor asked what his alternative would be to moving fossil fuels by pipeline. His response: “Why do we need to be moving fossil fuels?”
Because the economy would shut down if we didn’t. That’s why. Slightly inflated gas prices would be the least of anyone’s worries. Do people like el Sayed have any clue whatsoever what would happen to everyone in the country if their radical slogans were actually put into practice?
Finally, el Sayed approvingly quoted someone who’d argued that “cars are the modern-day cigarette.” He said, “I probably agree with” the sentiment, adding, “like, why do we do it this way?”
It’s unclear whether he’s thought on a deep level — or a shallow one, for that matter — about what the alternative to people driving cars would look like, even in the medium term. And comparing personal vehicles to cancer-causing death sticks is also an interesting choice for someone seeking major statewide office in Michigan, of all places.
WHY ABDUL EL SAYED CAN’T SAY IRAN IS A BIGGER THREAT THAN ISRAEL
El Sayed’s anti-energy crusade would make temporary fuel cost disruptions look like child’s play. He’s hardly alone — this is what Democrats are increasingly embracing, heavily driven by the socialists’ hostile takeover of the party.
They can grunt “High gas prices bad!” to win votes today, but what “solutions” would they impose tomorrow? Are voters willing to think one step ahead in this respect? Republicans would do themselves a big favor by pressing this point.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
