LA TMES tells the story -- McCain Gambles on Drilling

The LA Times tells the story in detail: "McCain Gambling on Off Shore Drilling ... He thinks the nation's high gas price will trump concerns about protecting the environment, especially in key Midwest States".

The McCain gamble is that voters will care more about high gas prices than they do any environmental risks involved in off shore drilling. To emphasize his point, he gave his speech supporting off-shore drilling in Santa Barbara, CA which was the site of a big oil spill in 1969 that many voters still remember.

In short, the McCain gamble, as described by writers Cathleen Decker and Michael Finnegan, is intended as a campaign tactic to reach out to independent voters. As these voters make their decisions, we expect them to consider a series of facts.

1. How much oil is already open to leasing? ANSWER: 79%
2. How much natural gas is open to leasing? ANSWER: 82%
3. How many total federal acres are leased and in production now? ANSWER: 91.5% leased but only 23.7% of these acres are producing.

According to a study done by the U.S. Committee on Natural Resources, the reality is that drilling does not lower gas prices.

So what's the McCain tactic about? ANSWER -- it's a "fool ya" game. "Fool ya Midwest" is a very specific kind of dirty political game tactics that seeks to blame a "straw man" while ignoring all the facts ... in this case, facts like worldwide demand, the industrialization of China and more factors, all of which have come together to create more demand for oil products. Essentially, McCain is playing the "fool ya Midwest" in the hopes that he can scare voters into believing that this off-shore drilling is the only answer to $5 gas.

In a way, it's the same sort of game he played recently when he went to Iowa to urge the President to veto the Farm Bill, i.e., McCain was hoping to trick some city people into believing the Farm Bill was all bad, when in reality, the Farm Bill had many sections important to urban citizens ... sections like school lunch, WIC, farmers' markets, food safety and food security. That was a "fool ya" game, too .. just like now with off-shore drilling ... "fool ya" by pretending that more off-shore drilling will actually lower oil and gas prices.