Georgia Mountain Beacon

Guest Column by C. Edmund Wright, Spokesman for Winning Our Future Super PAC

It’s the Energy, Stupid!

Government is too big, burdensome and expensive and ripping the America we know right out from under us.  But nothing rips it away faster than punitive energy prices.  Conversely, nothing could be done to restore security, freedom and opportunity quicker than unleashing energy discovered since 2000.  It really could be our magic bullet.

President Gingrich would fire that bullet.

As Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi continue to make cartoonish comments our nation continues to sink.  Real Americans understand what the Washington bubble dwellers don’t:  energy prices are not some esoteric commodity trading in a vacuum.

Energy fuels reality, and when prices are high due to self-inflicted liberalism –  we lose our security, freedom and opportunities. Meanwhile politicians act like this is just an issue of pain at the pump.

That pain sends negative shock waves through our entire society and is washing our very country out from under us.  These waves impact employment, the dollar, inflation, food prices and security.  Energy impacts every fiber of our lives.

Newt has understood this for years.

“This is why I am running for President” said Gingrich in a February 22^ndvideo.  “This administration is crippling our efforts to create a better future. They are literally holding workshops on how to stop it.  This is a big topic that relates to national security, your personal budget, the economy and to balancing the Federal budget.”

Newt knows American energy is literally a magic bullet in each of these areas.  It’s the issue that is the key to every other.  Yet our government is doing everything wrong on energy.

“You have to be somebody who doesn’t understand America to do what they’re doing” said Gingrich of Energy Secretary Steven Chu.  “A lot of academic liberals, and Dr. Chu is one, live on a nice campus and bicycle to their lab.  They have no idea how the average American lives.  Abolish the Energy Department.”

While academics like Chu have been holding workshops paid for by Americans on how to destroy America, the private sector has been making some incredible discoveries.

“An historic fact is going to change our understanding of our future” says Gingrich.  “North Dakota and the Bakken Formation.  We have at least 25 times as much oil as we used to think.  The reason we know this is it’s private land and the liberals weren’t able to block (exploration).  We may have 3X as much oil as Saudi Arabia.”

That’s revolutionary with a capital R – if we would but accept it and act on it.

“And there’s a parallel revolution in natural gas” Gingrich notes.  “As recently as 2000, we thought it was a declining commodity with a 7 year supply.  We now know we have at least a 100 year supply.”

This magic bullet is not fantasy.  It’s far more accessible than SDI was for Reagan or the moon for JFK and energy’s impact is far more foundational. Simply taking the first steps would dramatically improve almost everything almost immediately.  Liberals say ‘drill here, drill now’ will not work – leaving out the minor detail that they have stood in the way.

And consider their illiteracy on the subject, proving our case while demonstrating their own  ignorance.  A recent statement from Pelosi said “speculators are driving up the cost of oil…Wall Street profiteering, not oil shortages, is the cause of the price spike.”

Amazing.  On one hand liberals say drilling won’t impact anything for 20 years and on the other that daily trading is the problem.  Under Reagan we saw that the mere intent to develop our resources will send the price of oil plummeting immediately. 

But stopping it is all Obama cares about.  “The U.S. Attorney has filed a lawsuit because 8 birds have been found dead near oil fields” noted Gingrich.  “Now  thousands of birds are killed by wind turbines. I’m fascinated by the selective prosecution of oil companies over 8 birds because (of) the ideological radicals in the Obama Administration.”

Thus we are on a precipice – a dangerous tipping point that will define our future. There is a bureaucratic entitlement society that is threatening to spend us into oblivion to support the entitlement class and the bureaucrats hired to serve them.  This might swallow us whole.  Frighteningly, these two classes are almost big enough to vote us down that destructive road.  They threaten – in their ignorance – the golden goose that enables them today. 

The other option is a huge and powerful golden goose option.  And it’s not complicated.  As Gingrich says, we can “enable the American people to develop so much energy that we no longer have to care what the Iranians do in the Straits of Hormuz.  We’ll put Americans back to work,  keep American money here at home and strengthen the dollar. We’ll have an entirely new stream of revenues to the treasury and we’ll balance the budget without raising taxes.”

It’s simple: Newt Here. Newt Now. Pay Less.  But it’s far more.  We really are sitting on a magic bullet that can restore the America so many of us fear is slipping away.  As Newt has said, if we will but unleash our people and our resources, “we will live much freer and more independently.”

Nothing else matters.

Tags: C. Edmund Wright, Guest Column