PRICE AT THE PUMP COULD PUT OBAMA IN A SLUMP – AT 8:04 A.M. ET:  We've been saying for months that high gas prices at the pump were a political threat to President Obama in 2012.  Prices have soared in the last few weeks, and are more than four bucks a gallon for regular in some places. 

That's already too high.  They may go higher.  The president, already being compared with Jimmah Carter, certainly knows that one reason for the public's disenchantment with Carter was high gas prices.  From The Hill:

Skyrocketing oil prices are creating new political risks for President Obama, who is considering tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to relieve drivers suffering at the pump.

Republicans, sensing a winning issue, pounced Monday by announcing new hearings on gas prices and warning that tapping the reserves would provide only temporary help to consumers struggling with high gas prices.

Policies backed by the administration and congressional Democrats “have cost jobs, stunted economic growth and stuck American families with higher energy bills,” Rep. Tom Price (Ga.), the chairman of the House GOP Policy Committee, said in a statement Monday.

“The rise in gas prices is not merely the consequence of some temporary disruption and will therefore not be solved by some short-term fix,” he said. “It is a problem that requires an all-of-the-above energy strategy and one that should begin immediately.”

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, announced his panel would hold hearings to examine how “to develop our own American energy resources and also what has or hasn’t been done since President Obama took office.”

COMMENT:  If the Republicans don't botch it, they have a major issue.  The administration has been pushing "new energy sources," often at the behest of its ideological environmental wing, blind to the reality that these new sources won't be available for years, maybe decades, and require massive technological innovation.

In the meantime we run on oil, and the administration refuses to budge on new offshore drilling, or new, environmentally sensitive drilling in Alaska.  The average American family, not part of the crowd that flies to Aspen each year in private jets for "policy" conferences, is being hurt, and Obama is doing little or nothing about it. 

But there is a difference between 2012 and 1980.  In 1980 the Republicans had Ronald Reagan, although he was doubted by a large chunk of the tradition GOP ("we live to lose") establishment.  I see no Reagan on the horizon.  And so this anemic president might just slip through to reelection, despite the damage he does every day.

March 8, 2011