We’re well past the point at which congressional Republicans have jumped the shark, but let’s pause to appreciate the fact that at least one leading GOP lawmaker is now looking to a fake ad by a 27-year-old heiress/reality-show star as a serious source of public policy.
The lines between celebrity and politician blurred into a haze Thursday at a Republican news conference, as one congressman began pushing Paris Hilton’s “plan” on energy.
“Let’s bring up the Paris Hilton plan,” goaded Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas. […]
“Even Paris Hilton had an energy plan that she’s talking about,” said Burgess, seizing a chance to make Democrats look lackluster on the issue.
The Texas congressman tried to put Hilton in the Republican camp, claiming her words mirrored current GOP legislation known as the “No More Excuses Energy Act”. But, while that proposal does allow offshore drilling, a congressional summary shows it does not contain tax credits to encourage new automobile technology.
For crying out loud, Paris Hilton is not a policy expert. She wasn’t seriously offering an energy proposal for members of Congress to embrace as an actual solution.
For that matter, Hilton’s fake ad talked about using expanded coastal drilling to “carry us until the new technologies kick in,” which doesn’t make any sense, since even the Bush administration and McCain’s policy aides concede that we’re about a decade away from new coastal drilling having any kind of effect on the marketplace. And even then, we’re talking about pennies on the gallon. There’s nothing to actually “carry us” at all.
And yet, we actually have an elected member of Congress announcing, “Let’s bring up the Paris Hilton plan.”
It’s as if Republicans are going out of their way to appear ridiculous. On purpose.
I’d just add, by the way, that John McCain has dropped his sensible concession. Yesterday, after a week of nonsensical mockery, McCain backed down, and conceded Obama was right about the energy-efficiency benefits of routine auto maintenance. “Obama a couple of days ago said we all should inflate our tires. I don’t disagree with that. The American Automobile Association strongly recommends it,” McCain said.
Today in Ohio, however, he was back to his old tricks.
“He’s claiming putting air in your tires is the equivalent of new offshore drilling,” McCain said. “That’s not an energy plan, my friends — that’s a public service announcement.”
If McCain could at least pretend to take policy issues seriously, the prospect of his presidency wouldn’t be quite so horrific.
Obama never said auto maintenance was “an energy plan.” McCain certainly knows this, which is why it’s discomforting to hear him brazenly lying about it now.
But more importantly, McCain is not only dishonest about this, he’s still, even now, screwing up the facts.
[W]ho’s really out of touch? The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points. In other words: Obama is right. […]
The real problem with the attacks on his tire-gauge plan is that efforts to improve conservation and efficiency happen to be the best approaches to dealing with the energy crisis — the cheapest, cleanest, quickest and easiest ways to ease our addiction to oil, reduce our pain at the pump and address global warming. It’s a pretty simple concept: if our use of fossil fuels is increasing our reliance on Middle Eastern dictators while destroying the planet, maybe we ought to use less.
The RNC is trying to make the tire gauge a symbol of unseriousness, as if only the fatuous believed we could reduce our dependence on foreign oil without doing the bidding of Big Oil. But the tire gauge is really a symbol of a very serious piece of good news: we can use significantly less energy without significantly changing our lifestyle.
The phrase, “It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant” keeps coming to mind.