The Patriot Post® · Gas Pains and Debt Bombs

Democrats are very sanguine regarding president Obama’s re-election chances. Yet two economic issues could derail Mr. Obama. One is fraught with delicious irony, and remains in the forefront of the news. Yet issue number two, despite its far more serious implications, remains largely under the radar.

Issue number one? Gas prices. As in rising gas prices that give Americans the kind of heartburn they could take out on the president in November. It is an issue that withstands virtually every attempt at demagoguery, coupled with factual “embellishments,” for which this president is famous. In short, it doesn’t matter what Mr. Obama and his cohorts in the Democrat party and the media try to foist on the public regarding the economic “intricacies” of world oil prices, Japanese tsunamis, or Middle East war. Every occasion one goes to the pump and witnesses the next “record” sum it takes to fill up one’s gas tank, becomes an ongoing reminder of this president’s worldview, and his determination to see energy prices “skyrocket.”

As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. Mr. Obama, along with his equally obtuse Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, best known for his desire to have Americans paying Euro-level gas prices of $8-a-gallon or more in order to “wean” American off of fossil fuels, are indeed getting it. And not just $4-per-gallon. There are areas in the country where gas has already hit $5-per-gallon, even as the Democrat-media complex continue to tout a recovering economy. This brings up one of those simple economic questions that most Americans can answer: has there ever been a time in this nation where rising gas prices have been coupled with an economic upswing?

As for delicious irony, this is where Democrats get, as Shakespeare put it, “hoist by one’s own petard.” Here’s a small sampling of quotes by some of the very same Democrats now insisting that oil prices, hence gas prices, are beyond the president’s control:

• Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) 2008: “The price of oil is… is attributed to two oil men in the White House and their protectors in the United States Senate.”
• Charles Schumer (D-NY) 2006: “Had George Bush had his hands around the problem when he first took office, the price (of gas) would not be $3-a-gallon, but $2-a-gallon, or $1.80-a-gallon, or $1.50-a-gallon.”
• Hillary Clinton, 2008: “One of the great indictments I have of George Bush is that he’s injected a strain of fatalism into our country’s bloodstream…What do you think a hundred-dollars-a-barrel of oil means to our economy?” (oil is currently $100.07-per-barrel)

Not to worry. A Saturday New York Times editorial sets the record straight: “The issue of gas prices has not only been misunderstood but thoroughly distorted by relentless ideological spin from industry and its political allies, mainly Republican.”

Where was the New York Times when Democrats were “educating” the public with “relentless ideological spin?” Nowhere. As a result, that public education has proven enormously successful: the Democratically-demagogued albatross of high gas prices now hangs around the president’s neck, irrespective of economic reality. Because Democrats and their media allies “thoroughly distorted” the issue when it suited their purposes. Toss in a Democratically-abetted, unionized public school system that turns out economic illiterates year in and year out, and you have the prefect storm of self-inflicted payback.

Yet the bet here is that, if the timing works out, the other far more serious issue could spell the end of Obamnomics. That issue is the debt ceiling, and once again the demagoguery by the mainstream media is appalling. First, the issue itself. Despite the “cleverness” of Democrats last August, who thought that the deal reached by the Super Committee kicked the debt ceiling can down the road past the 2012 election, there’s real chance Congress will be faced with whether or not to raise the debt ceiling again prior to the election. If that happens, Mr. Obama will have to explain how America burned through a trillion dollars far quicker, or as our intrepid leftist economists like to say, “unexpectedly” quicker, than previously anticipated. At that point even the most inept Republican candidate could make a viable case against a president and an administration that has blown through more money faster than any administration in the history of the republic, perhaps even more money that all the previous administrations combined.

As for the media, they will once again attempt to cover for the president and Democrats just like they did the last time, when they asserted that the imbroglio surrounding the debt ceiling negotiations precipitated the first drop ever in America’s credit rating. That is an abject lie. Negotiations don’t engender a credit downgrade. The fiscal recklessness embraced by Democrats does. It is a recklessness epitomized by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who told a House Budget Committee on February 16th that president Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget would “put the U.S. on an unsustainable course” if enacted.

“We have millions of Americans retiring every day, and that will drive substantially the rate of growth of health care costs. You are right to say we’re not coming before you today to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is, we don’t like yours,” Geithner said, referring to Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) fiscal proposals.

Got that? We have nothing, but because we don’t “like” what you’ve got, we’ll let the country go to hell in a handbasket.

Of course it behooves Republicans to hammer this message home whether or not the debt ceiling become an issue prior to the election or not. Coupled with gas prices, it is precisely the kind of one-two punch that could take out the most fiscally destructive president this nation has ever endured. Will they do it, amid the inevitable cries of racism that will accompany any criticism of this president? If they can’t or won’t, their standard-bearer deserves to lose the election.

Unfortunately, it is a loss from which this nation might never recover.