By KYLE BAILEY
The public had it right in 2008. Rewind two years ago. Every cable channel, every talking head and every national campaign was talking about $4 gasoline and our energy future.
Should we drill? If so, how much? Is wind viable? If so, when? What about nuclear? Natural gas?
Enter the Great Recession and we saw public focus shift from energy to the economy and never return. Even in the midst of cataclysmic manmade disaster, discussion of our energy future rarely moved past "will BP leave taxpayers to pick up the tab?" (Spoiler alert: The answer is yes.)
Finally we are seeing the discussion shift back toward the defining issue of our economic future.
Present day finds us in a time when moderate Democrats supportive of administration policies are used for target practice. Let's face it, obstructionism has proven to be great short-term politics for Republicans. Uncertain about their economic future, overwhelmed by conflicting information post-stimulus and health care, and angry that hope promised by President Obama was not delivered immediately, the opinion of the public is volatile. It also leaves incumbent Democrats as sitting ducks headed toward the midterms.
That's not to say congressional Democrats didn't contribute, in a big way, to their own current predicament. Had Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., consolidated a message and whipped their caucuses in line, debate and passage of a moderate health reform bill would have taken three months instead of 13.
National Democrats had much to learn from our own man Mitch. Gov. Daniels initially infuriated Hoosiers by forcing us into the 21st century with daylight-saving time and Major Moves, though we resented his "I'm smarter than you and I've got this" attitude, and though some moderates lost their Statehouse seats because of it, everyone eventually calmed down. When we did, we showed our contrition by re-electing Daniels with 64 percent of the vote and making him one of the most popular governors in the union (unless you're asking a Hoosier unfortunate enough to be involved with public education).
Due to short-term political thinking by House Speaker B. Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend (strikingly similar to that of the current GOP), statewide Hoosier Democrats can't campaign on any of this progress. Bauer shoved his caucus all-in with their "Ditch-Mitch" refrain early in 2005 and was subsequently embarrassed when public opinion caught up to Indiana's progress. Had they found just one issue for his party-of-no to champion then, Indiana Democrats might not be in such a dire situation now.
Herein lies the problem and potential opportunity for Republicans. The recently introduced Kerry-Liebermann bill, an all-of-the-above strategy for expansive domestic energy production, is predictably being hammered as a "gas-tax" and "job-killer" by all the usual suspects on cable and talk radio. However, obstructing Clean Energy reform and labeling it as another "liberal gas-tax" would be a mistake of "read my lips"-like proportions for Republicans.
Remember, the major point of contention in 2008 was whether to focus on the immediate but limited short-term benefits of domestic drilling vs. clean energy's promising future but politically unpopular upfront cost. Today there is no such point of contention. As crude continues to gush into the Gulf and the first images oily Louisiana seabirds air, public opinion won't so easily be tricked by the "To avoid a liberal gas-tax, drill here, drill now, pay less" argument. (Believe me, I know. In trying to find a chink in U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly's 2008 armor and earn free media, my candidate Luke Puckett and I were shouting "drill, baby, drill" louder than the rest, even leading a delegation to the barren tundra of Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. We were wrong to suggest we could drill or burn our way to energy independence.)
By removing the climate change language from his own alternative bill, instead focusing on job creation, our own Republican Sen. Richard Lugar has made clean energy a bipartisan issue.
Republican obstruction of health insurance reform could mildly be excused, even to pragmatists; conservatives can honestly claim that even if their ideas (however few) were included, the bill did not share a common goal. One side believed it's an industrialized nation's responsibility to provide quality affordable health care to its citizens, and one side viewed such as government overreaching; there was never a chance at a bipartisan effort because there was never a bipartisan goal.
With Lugar's Clean Energy Plan, Republicans have no such excuse. "Creating jobs that can't be outsourced" and "reducing dependency on foreign oil" are shared goals by both parties and both chambers of Congress. Unlike health reform, blind Republican obstructionism of clean energy would not only be bad long-term politics (just ask Bauer), but also a criminally negligent refusal to participate in the job we sent them to do. Can you imagine the political clout a Lugar-Kerry-Lieberman bill would carry?
Oh yeah, and it could save the economy. Americans should reject as false the notion that the country that led our industrial revolution can't do the same with energy a century later. This clean energy revolution can and will be American's path back to progress. Republicans could not only lead the charge in securing our economic future, but also secure electoral dominance for cycles to come.
Kyle Bailey is a LaPorte native and currently is attending the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Miss. He has run political operations at the local, state and federal levels, most notably as 2nd District Republican candidate Luke Puckett's campaign manager in 2008.
