Friday, March 16, 2012

Drill Baby Drill Has Returned As The Way The GOP Will Create Jobs

Krugman looks at two of the GOP talking points for promoting job growth. Cutting taxes for the wealthy is always at the top of their list but they are working hard to blame the Obama administration for higher gasoline prices. They have revived John McCain's "drill baby drill" talking point from his failed 2008 campaign as the way to cut gasoline prices and create jobs. The only problem with their talking point is that the high gasoline prices have nothing to do with administration policy. They reflect high oil prices which are primarily a result of increased demand in emerging markets and concerns about Iran. The GOP claim that growth in the oil industry will increase jobs is also a joke. The industry has grown fast with the rise in oil prices but it has added only 70,000 jobs.

So how can we explain the GOP talking points? In the first place, the extraction industries are one of the the GOP's most generous constituencies. Krugman's second point is that the GOP has simply run out of ideas. He claims that they are intellectually bankrupt. I would add a third point. They rely on their propaganda machine to educate their base and it works. They believe what they are taught by the Murdoch media which includes Fox News and the WSJ, and they also believe what they hear on talk radio. Why would they tell their base anything else?

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