Why Liberals Like High Gas Prices

RUSH: From the Associated Press, ladies and gentlemen: ‘Four-dollar gasoline has stolen a beach vacation from Julie Jacobs’ family… exotic bath washes from Angela Crawford… Phil English has had to sell his beloved but fuel-guzzling red pickup. Like a plague that hits every economic class, race and age, soaring [gasoline] prices are inflicting pain throughout the US. Nine in 10 people are expecting the ballooning costs to squeeze them financially over the next half-year, says an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released’ today. But here’s the money quote from the story: ‘As a political issue in the presidential campaign, gas prices provide a slight edge to Democrat Barack Obama. More prefer him over Republican John McCain to handle the problem, 28 percent to 20 percent, while an additional 18 percent trust both equally.’

Now, what’s the purpose of this poll? The main reason is to create this poll so that they can create this news. They do the poll to create the news, and what’s the news? That people prefer Obama to McCain in dealing with gasoline prices. Um… BS! It’s all a bunch of smoke and mirrors. It’s a manufactured poll that’s designed to do nothing more than create a news story to promote Obama, by our bud’s at the Associated Press — the only remaining monopoly in the Drive-By Media.

From the Boston Globe yesterday, by Noah Bierman and Kimberly Blanton: ‘In last week’s Globe, reporter Kimberly Blanton and I wrote about the potential for gas prices to spur more Americans to abandon long suburban commutes, by choosing homes closer to Boston and other big cities or seeking towns with access to public transit. The magnitude of these changes is debatable, and will depend a lot on how high gas prices get and how long they stay that way. But as painfully high as gas prices are, and as frustrating as it can be to let them dictate how we live, many environmentalists … are cheering. The cost of gas could diminish the appeal of distant suburbs in ways that gridlock and the aesthetics of big box stores have so far failed to do.’ May I take you back to last week, where I postulated the theory that one of the reasons that these high gasoline prices are found attractive by the left is who they hurt?

They hurt primarily Republican, middle-class, suburban voters. If you look at a map of the country and the red and blue versions, versus who lives where and how they voted, you find that most large Democrat cities already have some type of mass transit. New York, San Francisco, Seattle, what have you. Chicago, they’ve got their elevated trains. You go into suburban, Republican areas and they’re not in mass transit. They are driving their cars, and they’re being hurt — and lo and behold, the environment wackos now in the Boston Globe, relishing the misery of working people across the country! They are relishing the misery, because they hope the misery will make these people — you Republican, suburban voters — conform to the way these liberal environmentalists think you ought to live, meaning back into the cities where you will only use mass transit.

And why do they want you using mass transit? Well, they say it’s because it’s less damaging to the environment. And they say it’s more efficient. What it does is put you under the control of city transit plans: where you go, how you get there, when you go. Liberalism is about control. It is also about relishing the loss of liberty. The car is part of American culture as much as anything else is, and it is under assault as though it’s evil. The car and what it burns and what it does for you — give you mobility — that’s something that the left in this country has been attacking for years, now. This is the grand plan: an attack on Republican suburbs and rural areas, which is an attack on red state populations, which is where Republican voters happen to be.