“This election isn’t about ideology, it’s about
competence.”
— Michael Dukakis, 1988
“The choice in this election is not between left or right,
it’s not between liberal or conservative, it’s between the past and
the future.”
— Barack Obama, 2008
Why? Why do liberals who capture their party’s presidential
nomination say things like this? Why are they so afraid to say,
“I’m an out and out card-carrying liberal and I’m proud of it!” Why
do they try and hide their liberalism behind “competence” and
screeds about “the past and the future”?
There is a reason. There are lots of reasons, as a matter of
fact. Liberalism did not become a laughing stock overnight. It took
a while since it began to rule the political roost in 1932 for
Americans to understand that what once was considered an honorable
philosophy had come to represent repeated and vivid lapses in
common sense and good judgment. So the past Senator Barack Obama
wants Americans to ignore will do nicely for illustration purposes.
It is — how could it not be? — a mere update of why
then-Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis tried the same denial
routine once he secured the Democrats’ nomination in 1988.
What exactly is in the liberal past that makes these people want
to run from liberalism when the presidential campaign spotlight
goes on? For Dukakis it was furloughed murderer Willie Horton and a
disdain for fighting for the Pledge of Allegiance, to name but two
liberal ideas that brought Dukakis to his proclamations about
competence over ideology. But what is it that drives Obama to say
essentially the same thing in 2008? Why would he be concerned that
a voting majority would flee modern liberalism — and his candidacy
— if they understood, as they did twenty years ago, what it was
really all about?
Let’s look in just one policy area that we are all acutely aware
of and use one of America’s most famous actors to illustrate
precisely why Obama wants to run from liberalism just as Dukakis
did in 1988.
Energy is the issue. Leonardo DiCaprio the actor.
How exactly did we get in this place where the cost of energy is
doing such damage to Americans? Why are you paying so much for gas
at the pump? For running your air conditioner or heating your home?
What is the connection between Obama’s liberalism and the reality
of your life? Here’s an example of liberalism at work on five
critical energy issues. Our actor friend Leo is involved with the
very first one.
* Building refineries: This story is as reported on July 10,
2008 by CNSNews.com senior editor Susan Jones:
Environmental Group Sues to Block Oil Refinery
Expansion
(CNSNews.com) — An environmental group on Wednesday filed a
lawsuit intended to stop the expansion of a BP oil refinery in
Whiting, Indiana. A shortage of oil refining capacity is often
mentioned as one reason for soaring gasoline prices.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is challenging air
permits granted to the refinery by the State of Indiana.
OK. Stop right there. Liberalism alert in Indiana. Here we are in
this major energy crisis, which Americans are reminded of every
single time they pull up at the gas pump. As this news story
correctly says, a shortage of refinery capacity in the United
States is one of the culprits in sending the price of gas at the
pump skyward. But why do we have a shortage of refinery capacity in
the first place? Who, very specifically, is out to stop the
expansion of this particular Indiana refinery? Why, the Natural
Resources Defense Council, a longtime liberal special-interest
environmental group. And who sits on the board of the NRDC? Yes
indeed, America’s favorite Titanic star, Leonardo DiCaprio himself.
THIS IS BUT ONE REASON why Senator Obama wants to brusquely dismiss
the idea that this election is about “liberal or conservative” and
re-make it Dukakis-style to something else — the future versus the
past. Were the American people ever to fully understand that it is
liberal political philosophy in action that is directly responsible
for high gas prices, well, can you say President McCain? But don’t
think for a moment that I’m picking on just poor Leo here. OK, rich
Leo. Here are other recent examples of liberalism at work in
causing America’s energy problems that don’t involve a rich liberal
movie star:
* Building nuclear power plants: Here’s an AP dispatch from July
9, 2008:
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — An environmental group has filed
a petition with federal regulators, seeking to block Duke Energy
Corp.’s plan to build and operate two nuclear reactors near
Gaffney, S.C.
In its filing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Blue
Ridge Environmental Defense League said the cost to build nuclear
power plants and the inherent dangers of operating them outweigh
the benefits of increased power generation.
* Drilling for oil: This story is an Associated Press report
from December 2007:
Environmental and Native Alaskan groups asked a federal
appeals court Tuesday to block Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s plans for
exploratory drilling near the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Lawyers for the groups challenged the U.S. Mineral Management
Service’s decision earlier this year to allow the energy giant to
drill up to 12 exploratory oil wells in the Beaufort Sea off the
northern coast of Alaska.
The attorneys told a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals that the federal agency failed to adequately
consider the impact of Shell’s exploratory activities on endangered
bowhead whales and other marine mammals.”
“An oil spill in this area can have a potentially devastating
impact that could linger,” said Dierdre McDonnell, an attorney
representing the Alaska Wilderness League, Sierra Club and other
conservation groups.
* Drilling for natural gas: Here’s a July 11, 2008 story from
the Denver Business Journal:
Ten environmental groups filed suit in federal court
Friday, seeking to block new natural-gas leases on western
Colorado’s Roan Plateau until federal officials evaluate
alternative ways to develop the area’s energy resources.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, names as
defendants U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, the US Bureau
of Land Management, an Interior Department agency that administers
the Roan Plateau, and two regional BLM officials.
The suit asks that the BLM’s resource-management plan for the
Roan be set aside and that the agency be barred from leasing
drillin g sites on the plateau on Aug. 14 as planned.
* Mining for oil shale: Here’s a May 15, 2008 story from the
Rocky Mountain News about the response of U.S. Senate
liberals and the Democrat who is Governor of Colorado. Need it be
said that Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO) is the conservative in this
story?
The Senate Appropriations Committee today narrowly
defeated Sen. Wayne Allard’s attempt to end a moratorium related to
oil shale development in Colorado.
It was a big day for Colorado energy issues on Capitol Hill as
Gov. Bill Ritter testified before a Senate committee asking
lawmakers to move cautiously on oil-shale development until more is
known about the environmental impact and other issues.
Meanwhile downstairs, the appropriations committee was
considering a massive Emergency Supplemental Spending Bill. Allard,
a member of the committee, attempted to insert an amendment that
would reverse the moratorium that lawmakers approved late last
year.
The moratorium prevents the Department of Interior from issuing
regulations so that oil companies can move forward on oil-shale
projects in Colorado and Utah. Allard said the moratorium has left
uncertainties at a time when companies need to move forward and in
the long term make the United States more energy independent.
“If we are really serious about reducing pain at the pump, this
is a vote that would make a difference in people’s lives,” Allard
argued.
But in a 14-15 vote, the committee spilt strictly on party lines
and rejected the amendment.
Day in and day out for decades liberals have actively pushed
some version of the above when it comes to energy policy. Their
activist groups sue to block the construction of refinery plants,
as Leo DiCaprio’s group is doing right now in Indiana, or nuclear
power plants, as another liberal group is doing in South Carolina.
They refuse to allow oil shale mining, as they are doing in
Colorado, or they won’t go along with drilling for either oil in
offshore Alaska (note: this isn’t even ANWR) or natural gas in
gas-rich Colorado.
Is there any wonder Barack Obama echoes Dukakis in saying this
election is not about being liberal or conservative? When it comes
specifically to just one issue, the energy issue, it is liberals —
as environmental activists, as lawyers, as Hollywood celebrities,
as governors, presidents, legislators and judges — who have
insisted for decades on the very policies that now have a
stranglehold on your personal economic windpipe.
LEO ISN’T ALONE as a liberal Hollywood celebrity on that NRDC
board, either. Laurie David, the famous liberal activist and
ex-spouse of comedian Larry David, he of Seinfeld and
Curb Your Enthusiasm fame sits there as well. Ms. David,
of course, was behind Al Gore’s slide show-as-movie An
Inconvenient Truth and has given bucks to every liberal
candidate out there, Obama included. Both Leo and Ms. David are,
according to the FEC, also financial contributors to MoveOn.org.,
that famous home of Obama supporters.
One could go on endlessly connecting these dots between specific
liberals known and unknown and their active efforts to shut down
the U.S. energy supply according to liberal philosophical
guidelines. They have sued, legislated, voted, and judged us all to
the exact moment America is at today in terms of energy.
The point here is really quite simple. How much did you pay for
gas today?
Do you think Senator Obama wishes to acknowledge that the
liberal philosophy he and his liberal (and frequently very rich)
friends champion has gotten us to this exact point in American
energy history? Of course not. If the American people figure out
the connection between the price of gas and liberalism, they won’t
put a liberal in the White House. Which is why Obama, as with
Dukakis, has to hide his liberalism. Connecting the dots between
what we see in our everyday lives and illustrating the folly of
whatever liberal idea got us here is what the rest of us have to
do.
Can we do it? Ask former President Dukakis.
