RUSH: Let me check real quickly here, the crude oil price, where it is now. Well, $121.74. It’s been down as low as $120 a barrel today. It is continuing to slide, and a lot of people say, ‘Okay, what’s making this happen?’ Now, see, it’s interesting to follow this. You know, the thigh bone’s connected to the tailbone or whatever, supply and demand. It works. Now, the Democrats and the Drive-Bys, of course, need a villain when the oil price and the gasoline price go up, and usually they attack Big Oil, but as of late they’ve been going after the speculators. Well, now all of a sudden the speculators, somebody in there, they’re selling, from a high of $145 down to $121.
Now, what has happened? What’s happened? By the way, I remind you, these high prices cannot be supported for very long by the market. (interruption) They have not stopped speculating, Snerdley. They’re speculating the price is going to go down now, not up. They haven’t stopped speculating. There’s all kinds of speculating going on out there. They haven’t stopped speculating. They’re now speculating the price is going to go down. Why? What’s causing this to happen? Well, there are a whole bunch of factors. There’s more supply on the market, people are driving less, people are flying less. There’s far more supply out there. We don’t have any kind of a supply problem. So supply and demand, it makes sense gasoline prices are falling a little bit, too. But you’ve had two things out there. You’ve had President Bush with a press conference canceling his dad’s executive order that prohibited offshore drilling. That caused, I think, a huge impact on the speculation market, even though it was not followed by any substantive action from Congress. Then, yesterday, Harry Reid caved on some drilling aspects of legislation ’cause the Democrats are getting heat about this. The Democrats are running scared. Pelosi nor Reid have not wanted any votes on drilling in any legislation in the House or Senate ’cause they know a lot of their members would cave and vote with the Republicans on this.
I don’t care if oil is down from $145 to $121, I don’t care if gasoline is down from $4.05 to $3.98, whatever it is, this is still the salient issue with the American people, economics and gasoline. They are still driving less, and they don’t want to drive less. They don’t like the impact that these prices are making. So anybody standing in the way of something easily understandable, more supply, less cost, anybody standing in the way is going to take the heat. So Harry Reid and Jeff Bingaman, the energy and natural resources committee chairman in the Senate, have put together ‘a bill that would open nearly a billion new acres off the coast of Alaska for study as well as accelerating Gulf of Mexico leases.’ The legislation drafted by Dingy Harry and Jeff Bingaman, Democrat, New Mexico, ‘would open nearly a billion new acres off the coast of Alaska to study it for drilling. It would also dramatically accelerate oil leases in the western and central Gulf of Mexico.’ The Lout, Senator Frank Lautenberg, Democrat, New Jersey, ‘I am unalterably opposed to drilling.’ He’s a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, cited a massive oil spill that closed nearly 100 miles of the Mississippi River last week. It happened on the river. It did not happen in the Gulf, and it was not an oil derrick or platform or a well that sprung the leak.
‘Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat, Washington, urged Reid to be very careful about drilling off the coast of Alaska. Reid could also face resistance from the Democrats who opposed drilling off Alaska’s shores.’ Now, the Democrats are sticking out their chins begging to be walloped on this issue. This is Rick Moran writing in the American Thinker, but I tell you we’re trying here to emphasize to the Republicans what a fabulous, dynamic issue they have here against the Democrats and Obama, not just the presidential race, but in House and Senate races as well. There’s no question the Democrats want you to suffer, there’s no question they want these prices remaining high. They want you angry, they want you angry at Bush, the incumbent Republicans, they want you fit to be tied, and you should be, at them. So when Harry Reid announces that he’s going to agree to open nearly a billion new acres off the coast of Alaska to study for drilling and accelerate oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico, bam, another three bucks came off the barrel price of oil. So the whole concept here of drill, drill, drill — drill here, drill now, drill fast — is paying off. In fact, let me find audio sound bite number 18. This is this morning on the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends, a portion of an exchange between the cohost Steve Doocy and the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol about the price of oil.
DOOCY: I was listening to Rush Limbaugh the other day driving in, and I heard him talk about how the Republicans have got a gift of sorts right now, and that is the fact that they’ve got a really good issue that they can beat up the Democrats with, and that is oil.
KRISTOL: I agree. I was on a panel with a Democrat the other day and he told me privately that the one issue there, the Democrats’ polling shows is really breaking through is energy and drilling. Americans just don’t understand why the Democrats are preventing what looks like environmentally safe drilling in places where there could be oil and places where oil could be extracted from, like the oil shale in Colorado and elsewhere, when we’re short of energy and when we’re paying four dollars a gallon, so I think it’s an awfully good issue for the Republicans.
RUSH: Amen, bro, it is a huge issue for the Republicans. It’s just going to take a little assertiveness, going on offense, but it’s made to order and is evidenced by Harry Reid caving on the issues. He had to do that in order keep some Democrats in his fold, should this ever come to a vote.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is Woody, Woody calling from Fort Myers, Florida. Woody, it’s nice to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Dittos from Florida, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: And it’s an honor to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: I’ll make it short. Rush, the price of fuel, when it was steadily climbing up and up and up, my business requires me to fill my vehicles up every day, it was killing me. Every day it would go up with the price of oil.
RUSH: I hear you.
CALLER: And now I believe you said that oil is down to 121 this morning, and I believe the high was 160. That translates, I believe, into 25%. But yet it takes awhile for that to drop back down, Rush. I don’t understand.
RUSH: Well, now, wait a second. I don’t want to know, I don’t want to get on your wrong side here, Woody, but I —
CALLER: You couldn’t do that, Rush.
RUSH: Okay, good. Correct me if I’m wrong, though. I don’t think that the price of gasoline ever got as high as it should have been with this price as high as it was, 147 to 150 a barrel. The price of gasoline did not reflect that. It had gone up fast. There’s no question that the gasoline price had skyrocketed up as the oil price went up, but it never got as high as it should. It eventually stopped. The tipping point is four bucks. The national average stopped at 4.50 a gallon, and it coulda gone to five or at least 4.50 a gallon had it kept up with the price on the spot market.
CALLER: Well, I should have started this out by saying, ‘I don’t use gas, I use diesel,’ and that is a whole ‘nother story.
RUSH: That’s a whole different thing. It’s different in terms of the price, but the taxes on diesel — federal taxes on diesel — are far higher than on gasoline. Now, I forget who puts out the number. But the national average, regular unleaded — which, who the hell buys that anymore?
CALLER: (laughing) Well, percentage-wise —
RUSH: (interruption) Dawn, you don’t buy regular unleaded. What are you driving?
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Are you put regular unleaded in these General Motors cars?
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: No!
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Nooooo! Good lord! You shouldn’t have said that!
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: My God.
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: Anyway, it’s down to 3.94 a gallon. Regular unleaded is now 3.94 a gallon, down from its top of 4.05. You know, it’s probably not going to drop as quickly. If the drop continues… See, the drop is not happening as fast as the rise. The decrease in price of oil is not happening as it shot up, at the same speed.
CALLER: Mmmn?
RUSH: But, look, here’s the point. Here’s the point about that. Regardless of this explanation, you are right about one thing, and that is: it’s still way too high. It has gotten artificially up there for a whole bunch of reasons, and people are tired of it, and they see now the price is come down because of the laws of supply and demand. If the president can sit there and say, ‘Okay, I’m getting rid of this executive order banning billing,’ and if Harry Reid can open up more leases and the Democrats agree with it and the price drops a combined $12 a barrel, the American people can see that if we commit to drilling (equaling more supply), that we’re eventually going to be on the right road and the right path to increasing supply and lowering the price, which is what we want.