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Obama’s phony oil
company tax
By Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
Published on DickMorris.com on May 12, 2011
In a desperate effort to divert anger from his Administration over gas
prices and to stop people from focusing on how his anti-drilling
policies have caused us to be so vulnerable to these price
fluctuations, President Obama is pushing anti-oil company rhetoric,
demanding increases in oil company taxes. He is confident, in
doing so, that the Republican aversion to any tax increase will lead
them to shield big oil and incur populist wrath.
He’s right the GOP can’t approve raising oil company taxes and that
their refusal to do so will raise the party’s negatives among a broad
swath of the population.
But he’s dead wrong in believing that raising this issue will, in any
way, make up for his failure to promote domestic drilling. Obama
has been so outspoken in his demand that we move away from dependence
on fossil fuels and so naively futuristic in depending on renewable
energy to replace it, that the average motorist will still grit his
teeth in anger at the president every time he gases up. People
get that “drill baby drill” is the best and nearest term solution to
high gasoline prices and they get that Obama is on the wrong side of
the issue.
A more subtle point, lost in the debate, is that decreasing oil company
tax breaks makes drilling and exploration more costly. But, in
the current environment of massive oil company profits, this tax
increase won’t matter much. It is best that Republicans keep this
idea to themselves and focus, instead, on the need for more domestic
drilling.
This would be a great time to expose Obama’s failure to issue oil
drilling permits in the gulf, his opposition to ANWR drilling, and his
refusal to allow horizontal shale drilling and fracking.
Obama is following a strictly left wing playbook as he gears up for
re-election.
* He invites a rapper to the White House whose lyrics drive people up
the wall
* He digs up his amnesty proposal for immigrants, an idea he failed to
push when he could have passed it in 2009.
* He rails against oil companies as gas prices go up.
* He casts himself as the defender of Medicare in the face of a radical
GOP and demands tax increases for the rich.
Class warfare, economic populism, and encouraging minority turnout are
his re-election strategies.
Unfortunately for him -- and fortunately for us -- they won’t
work. Each tactic drives up turnout among Republican voters too,
more than offsetting his gains. And each creates the impression
that Obama is anti-business which fosters the idea that he is
prolonging the recession by his divisive rhetoric. Finally, every
time he speaks like a candidate, he undermines his own presidentiality
and weakens his hold on the office. People want a leader, not an
advocate, as president.
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