The light at the end of a very dark tunnel this year for Republicans has been their call to lift the offshore drilling ban.   Mired in the most unpopular Presidential administration in modern history and dogged by outright failures of leadership including the Iraq War, the sinking economy, Katrina, Guantanamo etc. etc. prospects for the GOP looked very, very dim this year unless they found some way, somehow to reinvent themselves.   As luck would have it, that way turned out to be not much of a stretch at all, as Congressional Republicans took back to their familiar tactic of misleading rather than leading the American public over the need to lift the offshore oil drilling ban currently in place in light of record gas prices.

The facts are the facts, despite the spin and bluster that has been floating around.   As noted by Robert Kauffman of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University in a recent interview with National Public Radio, nobody knows how much oil is available in the portions of the continental shelf covered by the drilling ban until they start drilling but the optimistic projections have the number at 19 billion barrels, or slightly over two years worth at present domestic consumption rates.   What we do know for certain however is that in the best of all possible worlds - if drilling started today - not a drop of oil would come out of these areas until at least five years and it would take a decade for full production to come online.

But who needs facts when you have Frank Luntz?  Through spin, bluster, bravado, and more than a little bit of bulls***, Congressional Republicans turned this nonsensical “answer” to high gas prices into a full on political issue with legs that went so far as to rescue John McCain’s Presidential campaign earlier this summer with tirades about how Barack Obama “doesn’t wanna drill, doesn’t want nuclear. He wants you to inflate your tires!”  What wasn’t said was that proper tire inflation would actually do more to stem high gas prices, today, than the gimmick that is the offshore drilling ban issue.

Cowed into acting like they’re doing something about the issue, Democrats have now introduced measures allowing a limited lift on the ban.   But fortunately, this isn’t their first rodeo, and the measures are all bundled into bills with absolutely unpalatable measures for Republicans, such as rescinding tax breaks for Big Oil, forcing drillers to pay royalties that will fund alternative energy, and requiring 20% of all electricity in the US to come from renewable sources.   Here’s hoping that some parliamentary prowess on the part of the Dems coupled with swiftly falling oil prices will quell this silly issue which has given the GOP far too much traction already.

You can takepart in learning the real deal about the offshore drilling ban issue by listening to NPR.

LINKS:

Boston Globe: Drilling for a Comprehensive Energy Plan

USA Today: Worth the risk? Debate on offshore drilling heats up.

CNN: McCain wants to lift offshore drilling ban