A basic Republican attack on President Obama is shaping up for the 2012 election: that the national debt, the unemployment level and gas prices are all way too high.
Two of these three issues find a home in the Keystone XL pipeline—the
boilerplate Republican argument is that the White House not only killed
a project that could provide jobs in construction and maintenance, but
also exacerbated higher gas prices by denying the markets more oil. Rick
Santorum charged
in Ohio yesterday that Obama’s “radical environmentalist policies” were
threatening the economic recovery and driving up fuel prices. Mitt
Romney has been sounding similar notes.
Unfortunately, there’s an all-too-typical problem with the Republican
line on Keystone: it’s completely unsupported by the facts.
