The Politicians' Energy Crisis -- And Its Cure ( Newt Gingrich )

The starting point of any discussion of America's energy future has to be this: Shortsighted politicians have created the current energy crisis.

For decades left-leaning politicians have advocated higher prices and less energy. They were going to save the environment by punishing Americans into driving less and driving smaller cars. Now their policies have succeeded with a vengeance.

The very left wing politicians who favored a policy of no oil and gas exploration, no use of coal, no development of nuclear power, and no aggressive development of new technologies are now panic-stricken that their policies of higher prices have led to higher prices.

And now the same shortsighted, dishonest politicians who created the crisis are blaming everyone but themselves for the crisis. Because they refuse to be honest about the policies which led to this crisis, they can't be honest about the policies that will lead us out of it.

I don’t hate Newt. He was my congresscritter and I was a panalist at one of his early reelection debates (against David Worley). I’ve sat across a microphone and done several one hour radio interviews with a guy I think is probably one of the smartest people on the scene today. I wish he’d run for President. Sadly, Newt’s made some unfortunate and troublesome PERSONAL choices which would have allowed the same MSM that gave the klintoons a pass to butcher him like a hog in a national campaign.

Having said that, Newt DOES do some strange things from time to time which cause some of us to question the sincerity of SOME elements of his philosophy.

One was his soft stand on the illegal invasion (and that’s what it was and is).

Another would be his sit down with Pelosi to embrace Algore’s bogus “science” re. MAN CAUSED global warming.

Now he’s calling for a return to domestic fossil fuels to dig us out of the hole he and other Pubbies and Dems have dug by making nukes virtually impossible to permit — let alone build and bring on-line. The French safely get 4 times more of their electric power from these common-sense systems than we do. Until recently, I don’t THINK I’ve heard Newt out there campaigning for nuclear power plants here in order to take the pressure off shrinking supplies of fossil fuels — oil, coal and gas. Using hydrocarbons for huge STATIONARY power generation is crazy when we’re depleting a proven PORTABLE fuel for stationary first line or peaking plants.

And, no, I’m not demanding philosophical PURETY from Newt. I’d simply ask for just a bit more consistency, especially now that we’re REALLY in the soup — a soup out of which he and his cohorts from the Contract With America MIGHT have kept us back in the day.

The problem often is that people don't read or listen to what Newt said, they read or hear what other people say about what New said, and now just have a visceral knee-jerk reaction to anything "Newt", ignoring substance altogether.

I had a pleasure to hear Newt's keynote speech yesterday in Las Vegas in front of receptive but not a conservative partisan crowd - he did mention ANWR as a place to drill, as well as Atlantic and Pacific coastal drilling, as well as exploring more in the GoM and any other place and that we have huge reserves of already discovered and yet undiscovered oil (like recent Brazilian finds). As a matter of fact, he suggested a couple of bumper stickers for enterprising people, to make a point to political class:
"Drill more, pay less!"
"Free the American people from their Government!"

He slammed Democrats hard for a lot of things, including their "counterculture stupidity" in governing and "green blindness" and what the results of these are (less energy production and higher costs due to less drilling, exploration and refineries, not building nuclear reactors etc. etc.), praised Domenici energy bill and slammed "stupid, economically ruinous" Lieberman-Warner bill.

He said "McCain is out of touch with reality" regarding his [yesterday's] pronouncement about Global Warming as a fact and his "government solutions" to combat it instead of using "green" / clean and efficient energy production technologies including coal, gas, nuclear and clean drilling, using ingenuity and efficiency of competition in private sector. He called it a "green-green future", i.e. everybody gets what everybody wants - cleaner energy, more diverse and and much more of it (but not the inefficient and impractical ones, like wind and solar). His highest praise for McCain (in response to direct question about elections in post-speech Q&A) was "McCain is less of a threat to the country". Agree or disagree with that assessment, it's about as "complimentary" as telling John Kerry that his Global Warming "science" book The Moment on Earth was "very interesting read" and only about 60 percent of it was right - a high praise, indeed, you can do much better with real science fiction book.

He also slammed Bush for not taking the "opportunity" to fire a bunch of people for $1.3 billion (and counting) 2010 Census fiasco...

Newt said that within 4 months of Reagan's signing of oil and energy deregulation bill prices started crashing. One of the interesting insights he shared was from the recent book The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of his Conversion to Conservatism (by Thomas Evans, 2006) - he learned that it's very important to "[re]define where the center of the debate is - on the right or on the left".

He said a lot more, but you get an idea. He didn't "sell out", he is not a believer in "climate change" or the need to do anything about "it", but if "greens" can help us reach the goals of more energy sources discovery and production instead of them being part of "solutions" offered by al-Gore (out of greed) and his "counterculture stupidity" friends (out of greed and need for control) - then so much the better. They didn't co-opt Newt; on the contrary, he is showing us the strategy to co-opt the cult followers and "channel them" in the right direction for solutions, even if their perception of the problems is for now still skewed far left. He is not a "believer", he is not "conceding" it to them - he is just not engaged in a fool's errand of asking them to abandon their "faith" / beliefs in "global warming" / "climate change" in order to do what needs to be done. That may come to [some of] them later or may never come - look at all the 60s hippies that have never evolved - but is that really important if al-Gore and Friends' agenda of more taxes, regulations, controls etc. will be derailed? "Global Warming" / "climate change" scam is only a means to an end - if the goal is not reachable, they'll just drop it and come up with or "revive" another scam. In the mean time we will be on our way of solving our energy production and delivery problems.

We want "purity", but when was the last time we could convince or even talk to one of the "believers" that man-made "global warming" / "climate change" is not a problem they think it is, let alone it might not even exist? Obviously, they ar not going to listen to us about "solutions" to something that doesn't exist. "Pure" and simple... and very ineffective.

That’s all well and good but you don’t ‘get in the conversation’ by conceding every important point to the other side as you move in.

The only thing Newt is "conceding" is that it's useless to try and explain the "science" to the believers and followers of Global Warming Climate Change Scientology cult... You are not going to get to first base with them because they already know the "truth" and the "science" as told to them by Nobel-Prize-Oscar winner al-Gore and other "scientists" and is taught to them in schools and from every "personality" on every channel on every TV they watch and any "news story" they read. "The debate is over", or so I heard. So whose "solutions" to these very "real" and "immediate" problems of "climate change" are they going to hear and know about? And even if these "solutions", like taxes, regulations and more government controls over their lives and freedoms are very painful and even draconian, they are the only solutions possible to save the planet "before it's too late" or somebody (but only somebody who doesn't ask them to renounce the "faith") would offer them already?

Newt doesn't "concede" anything to them, he simply doesn't ask them to renounce their "faith" while offering the right solutions to their perceived problems which also happened to be the right solutions to our real problems. The engagement starts and the "center" of the debate is moved in the "right" direction. No pain, more gain, backed up by real science of energy production - what's not to like for even the "greenest" cultist?

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