Democrat oil paranoia

Robert Novak:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, back from the Fourth of July break last week, delivered a typical harangue on Republican obstructionism and Democratic virtue that included a promise: By week's end, he would show Republicans his proposal to deal with "this speculation thing" that he calls the root cause of $4-a-gallon gasoline. It would attempt "to end speculation on the oil markets."

By Friday, Republicans had seen nothing of Reid's plan because of internal Democratic disagreement on details. But plenty of other Democratic legislative proposals floating around Capitol Hill claimed to resolve the nation's gasoline woes by regulating oil futures trading. The claims are extravagant that these bills would dramatically lower prices at the gas pump, which lawmakers agree is the overriding concern of their constituents.

After consulting a wide variety of experts on both energy and markets, I could find nobody who sees speculation as a major contributor to the oil price spike. The problem is massive global demand overpowering a finite supply, aggravated by uncertainty about oil supplies in the Middle East, Nigeria and Venezuela. But the image of evil men on Wall Street manipulating oil prices fits, to borrow the trenchant phrase of the late historian Richard Hofstadter, "the paranoid style" in dealing with the current crisis.

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He provides examples of the paranoid style on the House side too. What they all have in common is willful attempt to ignore the laws of supply and demand. The reason they want to ignore the facts is they do not like the consequences that come flow from those facts, i.e. more drilling is needed. That would upset one of their constituency groups too much.

The Democrats are like the "truthers" who do not want to accept al Qaeda's word for the fact that they destroyed the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon. By denying the facts they hope to delegitimize the war against al Qaeda which they do not want to fight. Democrats also use the delegitization of the reason for attack Iraq as an excuse to lose that war. It is an important part of theri playbook.