It's all going according to plan. The high price of gasoline is beginning to impact peoples' behavior and so it makes sense that the Republicans will try to blame this unfortunate fact of life on the Democrats. They're already calling it the "Pelosi Premium."

Absolute nonsense, as usual, and quite sad. The GOP has no issues to run on, in large part thanks to the failure of GW the last 7+ years, so they have to drum up this red herring in hopes of smearing the Dems while at the same time keep the heat off their deep-pocket oil buddies. The latest is to clamor about the need for offshore drilling but what you don't hear is thousands upon thousands of already-outstanding leases remain undeveloped or idle. In addition, many offshore wells have already been drilled and capped with the oil companies deciding just to sit on them. And then of course there is the existing 13.4 billion barrels of known oil reserves (formerly called the Naval Petroleum Reserve) that just goes untapped.

Oh, and look, if the right wishes to make a stink about onerous environmental regulations being the big problem here I say bring it on. That claim is just another red herring but even more so the GOP realizes that to turn the attention towards the environment and away from the mindless partisan blame-game -- something they excel at -- is a losing cause. The public is in favor of most things that are pro-environment and as we know most Republicans are not, so again I say turn this idiotic canard towards focusing on the environment. It's all BS, but then so is the entire crux of these Republican accusations.