18 thoughts on “Obama’s Gas Tax Opening”

  1. This is insane.
    Why can’t someone, anyone, just say,
    “What makes you think that if we drop the tax the oil companies will cut the price? Why would they? They’re selling all they can produce.”
    Obama made a mistake talking about $30. He should have told the truth. It won’t save consumers a penny. It’s an utterly shameless useless idea.

  2. It looks like Obama took his advice and did one better by roping the albatross of W. around them both:

    Meanwhile, Obama once again stated his opposition to such a holiday while also campaigning in Indiana. “This isn’t a real solution. This is a gimmick,” he said. “And this is what Washington does whenever there’s a big problem. They pretend that they’re solving it to try to get though a political season but they don’t really solve it. And unfortunately, after John McCain made the proposal ,I guess Sen. Clinton thought it was gonna poll well, so she said, ‘Me too, I’ll do the same thing.’ and so now it’s the McCain-Clinton proposal to suspend the gas tax.
    He then said, “You know people are more concerned about looking good for the cameras and for politics than they are at actually solving problems. You remember when George Bush five years ago put up a big sign in front of an aircraft carrier saying ‘Mission accomplished’ in Iraq. I’m sure they thought that was good politics. Except five years later we’re still in this war in Iraq.”

  3. I agree 85%, my only beef is Chait is missing another huge and obvious benefit: Obama has already hit Clinton on taking oil money, and hasn’t gained that much traction on it. But by phrasing this issue as not just “it won’t work” but as “the only people who benefit are oil companies”, he can argue that Clinton’s oil money is already affecting her policy. I can’t imagine a more powerful line of attack than this right now, when oil companies are held in probably near record levels of contempt by the American public.
    Pandering, while distasteful, is something voters forgive. Legislation that helps special interest donors, especially “evil” ones that have the air of Bush administration cronyism, is not. Obama can actually make up huge ground on both of his opponents with this issue.

  4. I like the “maybe your chauffered” bit from McCain.
    So, now, Obama, the terrorist elitist Miss Daisy, has a chauffer too? Jesus putneyswopeH. Christ!
    Who is McCain now, Obama’s resentful butler from the white trash part of town, not that I mind white trash, considering, well, lots of things, including me.
    You know, even the Vietcong who learned to respect McCain for his grit are going to reconsider.
    bULLWORTH!!
    gESUNDHEIT!
    thank you.

  5. go Obama, go!
    the volunteers are really workin my little area of NC this week: phone calls, door-to-doors, flyers, signs. i hope their efforts pay off on Tuesday.

  8. Putney Swope?
    Thullen you been goofing me.
    Saw it on 42nd St. First run. Most racially demoralizing movie I ever saw.
    You gotta be older than my authentic pretense of immaturity.
    No matter how elevated yer faux white-trashiosity.
    I knows wit when I seize it.

  9. Talk about demagoguery – just more elitist BS from the Obamaists. And talk about hypocrisy – no mention from Jonathan Chait in his ‘progressive’ rant about Obama backing the same kind of pandering gas tax holiday when he was an Illinois legislator, voting at least three times to lift the state’s gasoline tax:

    In Illinois in 2000, Sen. Obama voted for a six-month, five-percentage point break on the state’s 6.25% gas sales tax. The reduction of the tax, which goes into a general revenue fund, passed on a 55-1 vote and included measures designed to ensure that the benefits of the tax break reached consumers. At one point, Sen. Obama jokingly asked on the Senate floor whether it would be possible to install placards on gas-station pumps telling motorists he had helped win temporary price relief.
    When some state legislators tried to make the suspension permanent before it expired, Sen. Obama spoke out against that measure but defended his vote for the holiday, according to transcripts posted on the legislature’s Web site.
    “I originally voted for the suspension because I thought that it was extraordinary circumstances, given the huge hike in prices,” he said at the time. Gas prices averaged $1.52 a gallon in March 2000.

    But wait, Barak’s come to his senses (a faster turn around this time than his Rev Wright flip-flop). What was good when he was in Illinois is now bad out on the campaign trail. What changed his mind? Was it like a bolt from the blue that made him sit up in his bed, his pupils widening with realization? Or a slap in the face of the kind Cher applied to Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck with the admonition: ‘Snap out of it!’
    So what changed his mind? What rationalizations that shifted him from a populist panderer in favor of the tax holiday, to a paragon of virtue, righteously defending the law of supply and demand — beside political opportunism, that is?
    But as far as the price and demand argument, a temporary suspension of the 18-cent federal tax isn’t going to increase demand enough to increase price to the same level it was at before the suspension. I challenge anyone to provide credible evidence that would happen. Or that the price would rise at all. Pump price may even drop. As I said elsewhere, there are much more significant factors now at work depressing demand then the pump price of gasoline – first and foremost, the screwed up economy, which has already depressed demand for petroleum by about a half a million barrels a day. Add to that the fact that here in the US we have a high current inventory of about 224 million barrels, and no indication the economy is going to improve enough this summer to deplete those reserves, or that a puny 18-cent a gallon decrease in the price per gallon of gas will get more vacation drivers on the road to increase demand much, if at all.

  10. jay, you may have overlooked that all those points have been discussed on the earlier thread on this topic.

  11. Um, JAy, that’s kind of the point of the Obama campaign, that you learn from mistakes, that we can do better, that he saw the this stactic didn’t woirk in Illinois so he’s not going to repeat it nationwide, it’s kind of like how when Hillary saw what the AUMF vote did she wouldn’t repeat that mistake– oops, sorry, I mean she wouldn’t repeat that mistake if she actually cared more about the lives of our servicemen than about political capitial (see: Kyl-Lieberman)

  14. Putney Swope? Ahh, true, timeless, tasteless art.
    The Borman Six.
    How many syllables Mario?
    The Mensa jackets.

  17. Drove through Apex last summer looking for a mini-golf course. That’s a whole lotta nothing down there.

  18. Senator Clinton was arguing that those who opposed her on the gas tax holiday were “on the side of the oil companies”. This seems to be backward. Obama seems to be taking a losing argument on this issue, but it is certainly not trying to put more money in the pockets of the oil companies.
    While I am seeing Obama as less appealing today than he appeared in months ago, there is a stream of shrill and distorted arguments from Clinton, and her passionate defenders.
    I wish that Obama was less eager to channel Henry Clay (and choose being right over being president), but Clinton seems closer than him to put the punch of an argument over its accuracy. She _is_ better on the issues than I had realized, but it is hard to accept the ruthless side of her campaign.

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