With Democrats and environmentalists opposed to oil drilling off the coast of Florida, Dick Cheney has decided to push the rhetorical envelope a bit.
With gas topping $4 a gallon, some Republicans are pointing to Cuba once again to bolster their case that the U.S. should be drilling along Florida’s coastline.
The claim: China has Cuban leases to drill for oil — miles from the Florida shore.
Even Vice President Dick Cheney got into the mix Wednesday, telling the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that “oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida. We’re not doing it. The Chinese are in cooperation with the Cuban government.
“Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply,” he added. “Yet Congress has said . . . no to drilling off Florida.”
I especially liked the “even the communists” line, as if those who oppose drilling are even worse.
It’s not just Cheney, either. Jonathan Stein noted that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) was given the same list of talking points to read. “Right at this moment, some 60 miles or less off the coast of Key West, Florida, China has the green light to drill for oil in order to lower energy costs in that country,” Boehner said.
Just this week, Rep. George Radanovich (R-Calif.) wrote in the Modesto Bee that “China, thanks to a lease issued by Cuba, is drilling for oil just 50 miles off Florida’s coast.”
There is, however, one small flaw in this line of argument — the Republican leaders have no idea what they’re talking about.
McClatchy’s story and headline were surprisingly straightforward: “GOP claim about Chinese oil drilling off Cuba is untrue.”
As Congress has debated energy policy over the past several days, an unusual argument keeps surfacing in support of drilling off the U.S. coastline and in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Why, ask some Republicans, should the United States be thwarted from drilling in its own territory when just 50 miles off the Florida coastline the Chinese government is drilling for oil under Cuban leases?
Yet no one can prove that the Chinese are drilling anywhere off Cuba’s shoreline. The China-Cuba connection is “akin to urban legend,” said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida who opposes drilling off the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR.
“China is not drilling in Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico waters, period,” said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Martinez cited Pinon’s research when he took to the Senate floor Wednesday to set the record straight.
Another Republican talking point bites the dust. The only question I have now is, will Cheney & Co. stop using the line now that it’s been debunked, or will they keep repeating it anyway?