1 minute ago 2009-12-03T23:24:03-08:00
ST. PAUL, Minn. – Sarah Palin’s command performance accepting the Republican vice presidential nomination gives House Republicans a fresh, high-profile champion for the drilling-based energy policies they have fought so hard to publicize all summer.
Republican lawmakers have camped out inside the House chamber for weeks to pressure Speaker Nancy Pelosi to schedule a vote on oil drilling in the waters off the continental United States. Now they have a powerful new advocate in the Alaska governor.
Palin “understands the importance of an ‘All of the Above’ energy strategy to help lower gas prices and liberate America from its dependence on foreign oil,” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said after her speech, echoing familiar Republican talking points from recent months.
Boehner himself mentioned the energy issue repeatedly in his speech kicking off the convention.
Pelosi has said that she will allow a vote on drilling, but only it’s part of a larger package of energy-related measures, some of which the Republicans oppose.
Pelosi (D-Calif.) is expected to introduce a proposal as early as next week that would open federally protected sites for offshore oil and gas exploration. Republicans are trying to insulate themselves from the obstructionist label if they oppose the measure on the grounds that it would also repeal a number of tax breaks oil industry and royalty relief for offshore drillers.
Even with Palin’s backing, some Republicans are concerned that this energy message might not be enough come November. But Georgia Rep. Tom Price, one of the architects of the month-long floor protest, says voters are driving the energy debate.
“Three years ago, when I was a new member of Congress, all anyone would talk about was illegal immigration,” Price said. “Now, for the past three months, it’s all energy, all the time. People are just responding to their constituents. And that’s a good thing, don’t you think?”
On the afternoon Palin delivered her much-anticipated speech, Boehner made the bold, and largely overlooked, claim that the House GOP energy plan would raise somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 billion for investment in renewable sources of energy and conservation over the next decade.
