The high gas price lobby

Walter Russell Mead:

Politico is shedding some light on a three year-old sound bite that continues to haunt the Obama Administration: Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s comments that American gas prices should be as high as Europe’s:

“Somehow,” Chu said, “we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

Unsurprisingly, Republicans have latched on to these comments as evidence that the Obama Administration is out of touch with regular Americans and harbors an agenda favoring green special interests over the needs of American businesses. With gas prices rising to the point where they threaten the already-fragile economic recovery, this figures to be a potent weapon against the president in the upcoming election.

While this position may be slightly unfair to the President (Mr. Chu was not yet in the Administration at the time he made the remarks, so any link between it and administration policy is tenuous), the quote devastatingly reveals just how tone-deaf and myopic white-collar, progressive intellectualism can be. The delusion that jacking up energy prices is part of a “good government” agenda is one of the pieces of insanity that keeps the blue intelligentsia from consolidating its position as a natural governing class.

More surprising here is that Politico is jumping on the bandwagon—although it notes that Chu’s remarks have been detrimental to Obama, the piece laments that the goal of raising gas prices doesn’t get the sympathetic attention it obviously deserves, given the support of numerous “experts.” With thinking like this dominating media and intellectual circles, it’s little wonder that the mainstream media is perceived as elitist and out of touch.

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The media only opposes high gas prices when they think it will hurt Republicans.  They do seem totally tone deaf to the Democrat policy of strangling domestic energy production in order to raise gas prices.  It is like they do not remember all the times Democrats have blocked production of energy in ANWR because it might take 10 years.  The last lime they blocked drilling in ANWR was 10 years ago.  Republicans better be preparing those clips for ads this fall.