A Few Comments From Others

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)
“My message to Democratic lawmakers is this: if you’re really for increased American energy production, then prove it by putting it in writing. Sign the discharge petitions House Republicans are circulating that will force votes on energy legislation Speaker Pelosi refuses to bring to the floor. And sign onto the American Energy Act, our ‘all of the above’ plan to increase conservation, innovation, and American energy production, instead of doing the Speaker’s bidding by voting against bringing it to a vote. If you aren’t willing to put it in writing, you’re fooling no one. You’re siding with the Speaker of the Drill-Nothing Congress and radical special interests that favor higher gas prices, at the expense of energy-strapped American families.”

“This cynical strategy is disgustingly dishonest. Without any real solutions to help Americans who are struggling with record-high gas prices, it appears the Democratic leadership has hit on a new plan: deceive. Deceive the press, deceive its members, and deceive the American people. Democratic members have a ‘pass’ from their leaders to talk about drilling at home, while the liberal Democratic leadership – which is beholden to special interests that want higher gas prices – plays ‘rope-a-dope’ back in Washington, ensuring there is no vote to help the American people before November. It’s cynical, dishonest, and wrong – and it won’t work.”

Michelle Malkin
While Madame Speaker advises America's daughters that "you have to know what you're talking about, you can't grandstand," she gave a pitiful performance on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" when pressed to explain her stonewalling of up-or-down votes on energy bills.

In classic grandstanding style, Pelosi mischaracterized GOP proposals as drilling-only, blustered about drilling not having an immediate effect on lowering gas prices, criticized Republicans for not divining the right parliamentary moves to get their legislative plans through, and then sniffed imperiously that "they'll have to use their imagination as to how they can get a vote."

Frank James
Pelosi, a California Democrat, accused Republicans of being monomaniacal on the drilling issue and of suggesting to voters that drilling would immediately lower gas prices. She wasn't going to play along with something that would mislead voters, she asserted.

Here's the problem with that. Anyone who has listened to the debate has heard House Republicans say they are willing to consider a range of options from the use of renewable energy sources to new alternative fuels to conservation so long as they can get a vote on off-shore drilling.

Newt Gingrich
Nancy Pelosi is not the only member of the anti-energy left looking desperate.

In an urgent email sent to their members last week, the far Left activist group MoveOn.org wrote about the national debate over how to best lower gas and energy prices, "Here's the truth: Right now, progressives are losing this argument."

They're right. We are winning and the Left is losing the argument over our country's energy future because Americans know that thirty years of their policies has led to the current mess.

For decades, anti-energy, left-wing 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. They favor a policy of no oil and gas exploration, no use of coal, and no development of nuclear power.

The result has been that over the last three decades, America has relied more and more on foreign oil rather than American oil, and our nation's power grid has been stretched thin because litigation and regulation has made it so difficult to build new sources of electricity.

The American people can see this, so they're rejecting the Left's philosophy of less energy and inconvenience in favor of a pro-investment, pro-creativity, pro-production, and pro-conservation energy coalition.