The presidential race this week came into focus, giving voters the sharpest choice since Ronald Reagan ousted the worst president in American history, Jimmy Carter.
In the far left corner of this fight is Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, representing the modern Democratic Party.
This is no longer the Democratic Party of patriots Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy.
Today’s Democratic Party has been taken over by radicals. As one of the heads of the extremist group MoveOn.org said of this once-great party, “We bought it. We own it.”
Democratic leaders leave little doubt as to how far to the loony left their party has drifted.
In late May, Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, grilling oil company executives in committee hearings, blurted out: “This liberal will be about socializing . . . uh, um . . .” She paused, perhaps noticing that she had let the Democratic Party’s mask slip, then continued: “would be about, basically, taking over, and the government running all of your companies.”
On Wednesday this week Democratic congressional leaders held a press briefing to respond to President George W. Bush’s call to lift the moratorium on offshore oil drilling.
Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey of New York offered another way to bring down gasoline prices, now topping $4 per gallon in most of the United States. “We [the government] should own the refineries,” announced Rep. Hinchey. “Then we can control how much gets out into the market.”
Other leading Democrats chimed in with threats to confiscate federal leases for which America’s oil companies have paid billions of dollars.
Eager to distract public attention from the Democratic Party’s refusal to authorize new areas for drilling, these left-wing politicians on Wednesday spoke on and on about how oil companies had leased tens of millions of acres not yet being drilled.
But as any knowledgeable 5-year-old knows, these same Democrats have made drilling extremely difficult, requiring many, many state, federal and environmental studies and permits that, on average, delay drilling for 10 years or more.
The private property expropriations advocated by Reps. Waters and Hinchey are like those of Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez.
Both Waters and Hinchey are prominent members of the “progressive caucus,” an organization that used to boast of its affiliation with Democratic Socialists of America.
Is it any wonder that since 1984 the Communist Party USA has ceased running presidential candidates and directed its members instead to vote for the Democratic Party candidate?
Neither the party’s presidential standard-bearer Sen. Obama nor congressional Democratic Party leaders have in any way repudiated the call for private property confiscation by Reps. Waters and Hinchey.
Not really standing in anybody’s corner but as near the dead center of the ring as he can is Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive presidential candidate of a spineless Republican Party.
McCain has muddled and reckless views in support of government-expanding schemes to remedy the dubious dangers of purported global warming. And one of them — in which McCain panders to environmentalists — has been to oppose drilling for oil on a mere 20 acres of the 19 million acres of permafrost wasteland at the far northern edge of Alaska known as ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
But at least McCain favors drilling offshore, most of which would be 10, 20, 50 or 100 miles out from tourist beaches.
The latest polling indicates that 2 out of 3 Americans now favor increased oil drilling in America. Obama opposes this. McCain favors it. Let the voting begin.
At Wednesday’s press briefing, the chairman of the House Resources Committee, Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, repeated another Democratic Party cliché: “You can’t drill your way out of [high oil prices].”
Is this true? First, combine our 60-plus years of proven oilfield reserves, plus new finds in the Dakotas and Montana, plus the vast shale oil deposits of Colorado, plus ANWR, plus a potential Saudi Arabia worth of oil offshore. Then add to that America’s coal reserves, the largest on earth, which if converted to liquid fuel could easily supply all our needs for at least 400 years.
If America had the will, could we “drill our way” out of our dependence on politically-unstable foreign oil producers? H-E-double-Hockey-sticks yes, we could, while holding speculators at bay.
So why do Democrats oppose our troops in the Middle East, yet block all realistic efforts to break our dependence on oil from such turbulent places?
Someone more cynical than this columnist might note that beneath his gentle West Virginia accent, Rep. Rahall is a proud Arab-American with complex connections and motives.
Senator McCain this week also came out in favor of building 45 new nuclear reactors to help replace fossil fuel-burning facilities.
Nuclear power, with its zero greenhouse gas emissions, is embraced by honest environmentalists such as Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore. But to the most extreme radical environmentalists, global warming and other purported ecological problems are not about saving the environment.
They are weapons with which to expropriate and exterminate capitalism and private property, and to destroy the U.S. economy, the cornerstone of American power in the world. And precisely such radicals are the puppeteers who now pull the hidden strings of the Democratic Party. Obama embraces them.
Democratic politicians understand that by threatening to expropriate American oil companies and refineries, they are frightening away private investment that might solve our current difficulties.
Democrats drove medical costs into the stratosphere with their requirements that hospitals treat millions for free, and by forcing doctors to practice ultra-defensive, ultra-expensive medicine to escape lawsuits by Democratic allies, the John Edwards trial lawyers.
These same Democrats are now likewise strangling the oil companies, choking off their domestic supply and — on the off chance they earn a profit despite this — plotting to confiscate their capital via “windfall profits” taxes.
The Democratic aim in both cases is to make private enterprise impossible in order to clear the way for a government takeover of our healthcare and our energy, two giant steps down the road to socialism and serfdom.
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