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Showing posts with label Gingrich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gingrich. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Gingrich: Obama has 'anti-American' energy policy
WASHINGTON (AP) — Newt Gingrich is asserting that President Barack Obama pursues an "outrageously anti-American" energy policy that snubs the Keystone oil pipeline and puts too much stock in electric car technology to wean the country from foreign oil dependency.
The former House speaker tells CBS's "This Morning" show gasoline prices have skyrocketed since Obama took office. He says Obama entertains a "fantasy" that the electric car "is going to liberate us from Saudi Arabia."
Gingrich is trailing Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential race.
On Tuesday, he called it "the wildest nominating process I can remember" and said he believes the race is still "wide open."
The former Georgia congressman said Obama must be made a one-term president, charging that he "routinely only obeys laws that he deems fit."
Carney Says No 'Magic Solutions' on Oil Prices, Amused at Gingrich Attack -- VIDEO
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Gingrich Launches 30-Minute Energy Spot in Super Tuesday States
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Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, who has recently shifted his focus from the economy to gas prices and energy policy, is set to air a 30-minute speech on those issues in several states that vote early in March.
As prices at the pump continue to inch upward, the former House speaker has seized on the issue and blamed President Obama’s energy policies as part of the problem. He routinely calls for a new “American energy program” that will allow energy development on federal property and in federally controlled waters.
“I think our goal should be simple,” Gingrich said on Tuesday in a speech to Oklahoma state legislators. “We want to be so independent in energy production that no future president ever again bows to a Saudi king.” The line is a reference to Obama’s deep bend at the waste when greeting King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in 2009, which the White House has insisted was not a bow. But the reference usually draws enthusiastic applause from Gingrich’s crowds on the campaign trail.
The focus on rising gas prices has the Obama administration on the defensive, with White House press secretary Jay Carney on Tuesday dismissing the idea that the president is to blame for the increases.
“The rise in gas prices is clearly the effect of a variety of factors on the global price of oil around the world,” he told reporters at a press conference. “They include unrest in certain regions of the world. They include growth in places like China and India.”
In the video, which was filmed last week in California while Gingrich was on a fundraising swing through the state, the candidate speaks directly to the camera for 28 minutes with a simple blue curtain behind him. The campaign points out that he is speaking “without a teleprompter or text,” a dig at Obama’s use of teleprompters in his speeches.
In his talk, Gingrich calls for an expansion in American oil and natural-gas supplies through increased production and the utilization of new technologies in shale exploration and hydrofracturing, the process of extracting oil from rock with pressurized water. And he promises to expand the areas where the U.S. drills for oil.
“What we should do and what I will do as your president is I will authorize the development of offshore as long as it is far enough out that it is not visible, and it is not a threat to tourism or the fisheries,” he says. “And I will authorize the development of federal lands that are appropriate.”
The campaign says the ad will first air Saturday night on a local affiliate in Washington state, which holds caucuses on March 3. It will also play in key markets in advance of Super Tuesday, March 6. Ten states hold primaries and caucuses that day, including Gingrich’s native Georgia.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Gingrich says his policies could lower gas prices
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich dangled the prospect Monday of gas as low as $2 a gallon if he's elected.
The former House speaker has spoken in the past of gas dropping to $2.50 a gallon under a Gingrich administration. The prediction, coming as Gingrich campaigned in Oklahoma, contrasts sharply with rival Rick Santorum, who told an Ohio audience that big-city Americans should brace themselves for $5-a-gallon gas.
Both candidates are citing new sensitivity over rising pump prices to push for relaxed regulation on domestic oil production. Gingrich isn't the first candidate to claim he can bring relief; former GOP candidate Michele Bachmann made $2 gas a standard part of her pitch.
What the candidates don't say is that U.S. presidents have limited, if any, power to affect prices of a global commodity like oil because such costs depend largely on supply and demand. As the economy improves, demand could rise, putting extra pressure on prices.
Gingrich and Santorum have been highlighting oil exploration in North Dakota and slamming the Obama administration for delaying a Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline. Those projects are considered long-term steps and might not have much effect on short-term prices.
But Gingrich's comments resonate in a place like Oklahoma, where the oil and natural gas sector is vital to a bustling state economy.
"With Gingrich policies, what we know is we will dramatically expand our independence in the world market, dramatically expand our capacity to produce energy without regard to our foreign potential enemies and in the process prices will clearly be a lot lower," Gingrich said. "Now, I picked $2.50 as a stabilizing price for capital investment reasons. It could easily go down to $2."
According to AAA's daily fuel gauge, a gallon of regular gas was approaching $4 in some places and even topped it in California. The national average was $3.56 per gallon.
Gingrich boasted that gas cost as little as $1.13 per gallon when he led the House and that the national average was below $2 when Obama was inaugurated.
"Why do we have this assumption all of a sudden, 'oh gee, that's the distant past,'" Gingrich said. "He hasn't been president that long."
Santorum focused on fears of prices climbing to record highs while campaigning in Ohio.
The former Pennsylvania senator blamed Obama for failing to drill aggressively for more oil and gas in the U.S.
Santorum said the economy has begun to improve slightly but "all of a sudden we're going to be hit with the same force of wind that hit us in 2008, in the summer, that caused us to go into a recession, all because of the radical environmentalist policies of this president."
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Associated Press writer Charles Babington contributed from Steubenville, Ohio.
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