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How To Beat The Democrats On Energy
By David Horowitz
Sponsored by ARMPAC and GOPToday.com
June 6, 2001

We are losing the war over energy and the environment. Every poll shows it. The California public -- where most of the political battle to date has been fought -- thinks energy companies are responsible for the crisis and favors price controls -- the Democrats' socialist solution -- by a whopping 70%. We are losing because the Democrats are attacking us with images ("price gouging energy companies") but we are opposing them with arguments ("it's about supply and demand") that are over many voters' heads. If you don't think so, consider that 57% of California Republicans also support price controls. We are losing because we haven't told the public that the Democrats and environmental extremists are waging a war against them -- against their prosperity and freedom.

In politics the weapons of battle are sound-bites and images. Images are created by a story. The Democrat story is this: Republicans are in the pockets of greedy oilmen who are gouging the public; Democrats are the friends of the people. Democrats will use government to save consumers from the clutches of greedy oilmen and their politician cronies. Fear is a powerful emotion. If Democrats are allowed to plant these fears in the hearts of the voting public, we will lose the 2002 elections. Count on it. It is now two months into the energy battle and Republicans still have no story. Republicans answer Democrat attacks with negative policies (no government controls) and complicated analyses (if you cap prices it will diminish supplies). That's why we're losing. This War Room outlines a Republican story that is emotionally powerful and -- more importantly -- generates images of Democrats as bad guys. It's a story designed to help Republicans win.

The Democrats War Against Americans' Freedom

Energy is freedom. You reach for your cell phone, you hop into your car, you flick on the air conditioning, and you connect to the Internet. Energy makes all this possible. But energy does more than that. Energy is required to produce everything that's made. Plentiful energy means cheap energy; cheap energy reduces the cost of everything. The cheaper energy is, the more you can buy. Energy is the basis of our prosperity. Plentiful energy is the freedom of all Americans to enjoy a good life.

California is now in the grips of an energy crisis. Supplies are short. Prices are skyrocketing. Businesses are failing. Even schoolrooms are going dark. But listen to what the Democrat governor of California, Gray Davis, has to say against the backdrop of rolling blackouts in his state: "We are literally in a war with energy companies…" Gray Davis is at war with the companies that produce the energy we need!

For more than thirty years, the American left -- the Democratic Party, the environmental zealots, and their media fellow travelers -- have been at war with energy producers. They have taken for granted the freedom that energy provides, and they have waged a war on those who make it possible.

The left has agitated and the Democrats have regulated and, with the aid of a willing media, they have spread environmental panic -- and won. They have ensured that for 20 years no large petroleum refineries have been built in America. They have launched alarmist attacks on the nuclear power industry and virtually throttled it at birth. They have encouraged unwarranted fears about magnetic fields and made construction of new power lines almost impossible. They have inspired junk-science hysterics and slowed the building of pipelines that deliver natural gas. In the name of a slip of wasteland the size of the Dallas airport (in a state that is twice the size of Texas) they have blocked the development of Alaskan oil, which would provide consumers with the equivalent of 20 years of imports from Saudi Arabia. For thirty years, the Democrats and the left have choked off America's energy, and with it a significant slice of Americans' freedom.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost. California leads the nation in government regulation and environmental extremism. As result, in California energy supplies have become insufficient to meet exploding demand. Prices are spiking, energy-freedoms are shrinking, and a crisis is at hand. What is the Democrats' response? Continue the war.

Discussing the California energy crisis on FoxNews, top Democratic strategist Bob Beckel put it this way: "We're not going to have an energy policy that's going to reward the oil companies." Wow, that makes sense! The cause of the crisis is an energy shortage, but Democrats like Bob Beckel are not going to reward people for producing more energy! Instead they want price caps! Government controls! Was Bob Beckel talking through his hat, or simply out of turn? In fact, he was talking the party line: "The Bush-Cheney energy plan is not a plan for America's future," Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle announced at a recent press conference to attack the Administration proposal. "It is a page from our past. It relies almost exclusively on the old way of doing things, drilling more oil wells, burning more coal and using more natural gas." What does Tom Daschle propose as an alternative to gas, coal, oil and plutonium? Solar panels, perhaps? Windmills? As they say in Fargo, you betchya.

Russert: Over the next 20 years, US energy demands will increase by 62 percent for natural gas, 33 percent for oil and 45 percent for electricity, according to estimates of the federal Energy Information Administration. How do you … maintain this country as the premier economic power in the world simply by conservation?

Daschle: Well, I wouldn't minimize conservation. We're 5% of the world's population. We have 30% of the world's energy demand. I think that's wrong…

Russert: Is drilling in the Arctic Wild Refuge dead?

Daschle: Yes it is.

Russert: How about an increase in nuclear power?

Daschle: I don't think that this is the right time.

In their war on American freedom, the Democrats now refer to Republicans as the Gas Oil and Plutonium party. The DNC has even created a website at GrandOldPetroleum.com for slow thinkers in its ranks.

Here is the complete Gray Davis quote cited earlier: "We are literally in a war with energy companies who are price gouging us. Many of those companies are in Texas." It's Pearl Harbor in California! It's a sneak attack by Texas oilmen! And their cronies in the White House! "They sound like oilmen!" clucks the junior senator from California pointing her finger at the occupants of the White House. It's a greedy, gouging oil plot from Texas. That's the Democrats' war cry.

The attack may be ludicrous but it works. Against a tale of conspiracy and stabs in the back, there is little room for rationality and common sense. Gray Davis himself received far more campaign contributions from big energy in California than did George Bush. His own hired guns, Fabiani and Lehane are on the payroll of the biggest energy utility in the state. (The previous biggest energy utility was bankrupted by the current crisis. Some gouging!) Two experts at the Cato Institute have, in fact, looked into the question of whether the California problem was created by a conspiracy of Texans to charge ruinous prices the market could not justify. They checked the reports of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and discovered that the legitimate price for power in January 2000, as the crisis unfolded, was 27 cents a kilowatt-hour. The company operating the grid that supplies California with all of its power reports that in the same month it paid an average of 28 cents per kilowatt-hour. A one-cent price hike has obviously nothing to do with the California power crisis in which prices are spiraling astronomically higher than their normal levels (in fact seventy times their level last year).

But we don't really need this evidence to know the Democrats are lying. How can there be massive price gouging unless there is a conspiracy to fix prices -- a crime in the United States? But where are the grand juries, and what Democrat is actually charging that? Their accusations are pure demagoguery: all innuendo, no specifics. This from the party that had to see the stain on the dress in order to be persuaded.

Attacking the energy companies is only half the Democrats' war plan. Attacking the President is the other. The president stands in the way of the Democrats' proposed "solution:" government control of the price of energy ("price caps"). Government controls are a socialist scheme. Government controls on energy prices are exactly what caused the California crisis. First the state of California placed such burdensome regulatory controls on energy production that a shortage resulted. Shortages mean higher prices. But high electricity bills are bad for politicians. So, in the face of rising demand, the state of California held down the retail price so California consumers had no incentive to save their power. That's why Pacific Gas and Electric went bankrupt. The government fixed the price the company could charge consumers while the scarce supplies made its own costs rise. It lost money with every price-controlled kilowatt-hour it sold, until it just went belly up.

The government price caps that Democrats are now demanding will inevitably discourage new energy production -- which is the only long-term solution to the problem. Government controls will also discourage conservation. If power is cheap, why should the consumer use less? As if the destructive proposal for price controls were not enough, California Democrats are also proposing state ownership of the means of transmission. Were Democrats asleep during the collapse of the Soviet empire? Apparently. The Democrat-sponsored legislation to enable the State of California to take over its power lines and get into the power business is proceeding rapidly in the state assembly.

The Democrat solution is no solution. Government controls will only create greater problems down the line. In the meantime, Californians will suffer incalculable loss as a result of the anti-energy, anti-market legacies of the last thirty years. It is the political lessons of these years that Americans need to learn before it is too late: The Democrats are a party of the left; their solutions are big government controls -- socialist schemes -- that will cost taxpayers more and will not work. The Democrats are a party that will say anything for political power. In order to gain and expand government power, they will divide Americans against each other, they will sacrifice America's prosperity, and they will make war on America's energy producers and the defenders of Americans' freedom.

David Horowitz is editor-in-chief of FrontPageMagazine.com and president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture.

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