Frist: "Gas prices are Clinton's fault"

Deluded boob Bill Frist today did what Rs have done since time immemorial: blame Bill Clinton for everything. In this case, it's Bill Clinton's fault that oil prices are two and a half times as high as they were during his Presidency. If President Clinton hadn't vetoed drilling in ANWR, so goes Frist's convoluted logic, we would have enough supply.

Leave aside the obvious fact that supply isn't the problem - the gas is there, it's just that there are Iraq (and Iran) risk premiums built into the price these days, and Chinese consumption has doubled in the last ten years - and the simple fact that Frist's mythical ANWR wells couldn't make up more than 1-2% of demand, leading to perhaps a 1-2% drop in prices. If, that is, they ever could come online; estimates for the first oil production from the wildlife refuge assume a ten-year preparatory phase of construction and exploration before the first drop of SUV juice flows.

But let's assume for the sake of argument that Frist is right, and it really all is Bill Clinton's fault. It's not, but think this one through. What Frist is saying with this logic is that Rs are so staggeringly incompetent that they are unable to fix a ten-year-old policy mistake, even with complete control of the government. Drilling in ANWR isn't going to happen - so what other ideas do Rs have?

That echoing silence you hear is of a governing party so bereft of vision that it has to blame a guy who's been out of office for over five years for its own failures. Don't tell me about what President Clinton did in 1996; tell me what you have done since you achieved unified control over my government in January of 2001. Other, that is, than to blow billions of tax dollars into the coffers of the oil companies.