Obama won’t campaign on gas prices–but he did in 2008

During a brief stop in the battleground state of New Hampshire, President Barack Obama on Thursday criticized Republicans for "licking their chops" over painfully high gas prices and marveled: "Only in politics do people respond to bad news with such enthusiasm."

Well, he would know.

Some Republicans and enterprising journalists drilled, baby, drilled into old videos of then-candidate Obama and found evidence that he wasn't immune to the appeal of pumping painful petroleum prices for political profit.

"For the well-off in this country, high gas prices are mostly an annoyance, but to most Americans they're a huge problem bordering on a crisis." Obama says in one notable video from April 25, 2008, which shows the future president speaking behind a podium at a gas station in Indianapolis.

The communications director for the Indiana Republican Party, Pete Seat, linked to the video on his Twitter feed, www.twitter.com/peteseat.

"Obama says 'some politicians' see 'higher gas prices as a political opportunity' - he's very self-aware ..." Seat quipped.

Over at BuzzFeed, ace forensic hyperlinker Andrew Kaczynski dug up some more examples.

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