Truman’s Famous Epithet

10 June 2008 |permalink | email article

With the average national cost for gasoline crossing the $4-mark for the first time, House Republicans are trying to lay the blame squarely on congressional Democrats.

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio told The Hill, “Today marks another dubious day for this Do-Nothing Democratic Congress, claiming that the majority party has let gas prices soar to new heights while refusing to schedule a vote on a plan to increase American-made energy to help lower gas prices.

What’s interesting is that “Do-nothing” is associated with Harry Truman’s epithet and criticism of the 1947-48 Republican-controlled Congress that rejected much of his program.

It was to be instrumental in giving Truman an upset victory over Republican Thomas E. Dewey in 1948.

Boehner’s gasoline comparison falls short. An association with Big Oil has long been a political problem for the Bush family, the lame duck president and past business connections of Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice.

This year Democrats control Congress, and have won three special elections. Bush is not on the ballot, and Barack Obama is an early favorite to defeat John McCain.

Democrats, who label the GOP plans a “drill and veto” energy policy, blame Bush.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi points to efforts the 110th Congress has taken to boost the country’s energy security and curb prices.

One recalls the breakdown in the long and cozy relationship between B43 and Saudi Arabia – remember Prince Bader-Bush? – when the Saudi government helped keep the markets stable after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Riyadh, dismayed by the consequences of the Iraq war and what it sees as a weak Bush administration commitment to the Palestinians, is suddenly calling for an emergency oil summit.

McCain will try to spin high gasoline prices as an issue in the debates. Obama could reply with FDR’s reference to the “do-nothing policies of Hoover” in 1932.

Quote of the Day

“I find it naïve and disingenuous to claim that you can create democracy in Iraq any time soon. The administration has already assured us that the U.S. will not stay there for very long,” adding, if that is the case, then the goal of establishing a constitutional system in Iraq is a joke.” – The late William Odom, a director of the National Security Agency in the Reagan administration. and an early and outspoken opponent of the war.

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