So this tells us that:
- the WSJ editorial pages reads DailyKos
- they are on the lookout for issues to bash us with.
The Rove discussions took place pretty much at the same time as my gas tax diary was featuring prominently on the recommended list - and I repeated the experience yesterday.
Maybe they have yet to hear about Jerome a Paris's 'political suicide' diaries, or maybe they see that there is so much hostility to the idea on the website that it's not a winning idea for them (but when did that ever stp them?). Or maybe they see the writing on the wall and will preempt the issue?
They have already printed tribunes by James Woolsey, who argues forcefully for completely new energy policies (See this diary from last November Let's hurry on energy policy or the Right will get there first). If the Republicans grab the issue of energy and energy security before the Dems do, it will be a tragedy of historical proportions, because they will go at it with their usual ideas: incentives to produce more, fewer regulations and environmental constriants, adn an aggressive foreign policy. ANWR, Energy Bill, Iraq. Only bigger (or worse). But they will own the debate.
The reason I have been writing about the gas tax is not that it should be pushed as the big Dem idea, but that it has to be part of any sane policy proposal, and it IS part of the Energize America which will be pushed into more public view, hopefully, via YearlyKos and more.
So my goal is not to say "let's tax gas", but that Dems be ready to acknowledge that there is a gas tax as part of the comprehensive package being proposed, to stand for it - again, as part of a full package - instead of being cowered in fear by Republican attacks, and to OWN THE DEBATE ON ENERGY.
Energize America is not about the gas tax. It is a serious, comprehensive, ambitious policy that incorporates a number of the alternatives many of you have proposed. It also incorporates a windfall profit tax, but it does include a fuel tax, which is necessary to fund the full range of its ambitious proposals, and useful on its own to slowly alter people's gasoline-consumption behavior. It recognises that this will have a cost on a number of categories in the population and proposes ways to alleviate these. It is also a slow moving tax, with increases of 1 cent per month - that's $40 added each year to the average American's fuel bill.
Democrats will not be taken seriously if they are ashamed of what they propose. If energy is such a vital issue, and a major security concern, is it really impossible to argue for such an effort, which will be accompanied by a comprehensive programme to build the economy of the future, based on new technology, sustainable energy, and US-based jobs instead of deadly and costly foreign entanglements?
So, while the WSJ complains about the "fucks" that pepper our threads, let's keep on working on actual solutions to America's problems?
Isn't the issue today that the voting public knows that the Republicans are hopeless, incompetent, corrupt, etc..., but they don't know what the Dems stand for?
How about telling them that the Dems stand for Energy Security and that they have a real plan to get there?
Here it is again: Energize America - A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security (Fourth Draft)
