GOP Rep. Mike Pence on President Obama’s apparent change of heart regarding offshore drilling:
“As usual the devil is in the details. Only in Washington, D.C., can you ban more areas to oil and gas exploration than you open up, delay the date of your new leases and claim you’re going to increase production.
“The President’s announcement today is a smokescreen. It will almost certainly delay any new offshore exploration until at least 2012 and include only a fraction of the offshore resources that the previous Administration included in its plan.
“Unfortunately, this is yet another feeble attempt to gain votes for the President’s national energy tax bill that is languishing in the Senate. At the end of the day this Administration’s energy plan is simple: increase the cost of energy on every family in America and trade American jobs oversees at a time when millions of Americans are looking for work.”
Much more from Michelle Malkin.
Update: Ed Morrissey on the optics of the proposal:
Obama will find himself the target of unbelievable ire from the enviro-Left after making this decision. He just spoke at Copenhagen about the need to curtail this very kind of energy use, and now he’s not only backing oil drilling but ending decades of official federal hostility to off-shore drilling. Expect the backlash to be severe, and expect that to play into the midterms as well.
Frank Lautenberg, New Jersey’s Jurassic Democrat senator, is one of the first out of the gate with his fossilized rancor:
Lautenberg BLASTS Obama decision on drilling: “Giving Big Oil more access to our nation’s waters is really a Kill, Baby, Kill policy.”
Huh. Since when did Lautenberg turn pro life?
On the other hand, as Jim Geraghty tweets, “In June 2008, Obama pledged to keep in place the moratorium on offshore drilling. Expire, baby, expire.”
Heh.™
Update: And speaking of “Heh….”
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