Archive → May 16th, 2010
Stesak may fire Specter before GOP opponent can
In Pennsylvania, Democratic candidate Joe Stesak is mounting an impressive anti-Arlen Specter campaign in the impending Democratic primary this coming Tuesday. Specter, a long-time liberal Republican, switched to the Democrats a couple years ago to help solidify Democrat control of the Senate. The move received a lot of appreciation from Senate Leader Harry Reid, who looks likely to be fired by Nevada voters in November. Reid couldn’t have been more grateful, in fact, if he’d been a fireman at a fire sale.
But that doesn’t mean Pennsylvania Democrats want the former GOP bogeyman hanging around either their cheese and drinking their wine; Stesak, a reliable ultra-lib, appears to have Democrat voters ready to send Specter packing before November. He charges that Specter’s party change was more about saving his seat than real conviction, and it’s a charge that sticks.
It’s a mixed bag choice for the Dems, however; Specter isn’t any more trustworthy for the Dems than he was for the GOP, but he has strong name value on a ballot. Stesak is likely to be far more dependable, but doesn’t have Specter’s name value.
One advantage to giving the nod to Stesak is the anti-incumbent fever sweeping the electorate this year; if the Dems fire Specter by nominating Stesak on Tuesday, they avoid Pennsylvania voters doing the job in November, which would turn the seat back to GOP hands. However, the question remains whether Stesak has any better change to defeat his GOP opponent in November, given Stesak’s weak name value.
Time will tell.
Obama, Dems will get it wrong again on oil
President Obama and other Democrats in tidy bow ties have jumped on the oil mess in the Gulf, headed by BP, as an opportunity to pull back on Obama’s promise to expand off-shore drilling. And once again, they form policy for all the wrong reasons.
Do oil companies like BP need to do better on safety precautions and contingency plans? You bet. But should we expect that nothing ever goes wrong? A bit unrealistic, that.
I for one simply refuse to believe that there’s any sort of nefarious plot on behalf of BP to pollute the Gulf. Does any reasonable person believe BP wants to be losing all those oil riches into the ocean? Of course not. It’s lost money… and a lot of it.
But is this incident any reason to call expanded off-shore drilling “dead on arrival,” as many Dems have? Absolutely not, because none of the important factors have changed.
The important factors are that other countries that are a lot further away from the Gulf than us are still drilling there; that we are far too dependent on other countries to supply our oil needs; that the less oil we produce domestically, the stronger the likelihood becomes that OPEC and other players can control our economy by controlling our oil prices.
Right now, Obama and the Dems are acting like the kid who falls over and skins a knee trying to ride a bike and vows never to ride a bike again. Is this thing in the Gulf terrible for the environment and a big, huge mess no one wants to see repeated? Absolutely.
But it’s not a reason to back off from off-shore drilling and thereby increasing our dependence on foreign markets to meet our oil needs.
