Obama Fights Critics Who Say He Is To Blame For High Gas Prices

As the Republican primary heats up it is President Obama who is on the defensive right now. Gasoline prices are at an all time high and the President is trying to rally support for his policies while at the same time brace voters for the idea that prices at the pump will not be going down any time soon.
The strategy of the President and of most Democrats is to highlight their support for renewable energy and at the same time reduce reliance on foreign oil. In practice the Democrats usually put into place policies that do neither. They stifle domestic production of fossil fuels and at the same time make investments in renewable resources that have no hope of going anywhere.

Obama hasn’t been very bashful with giving the Republicans ammo to attack him with. Obama gave a federal loan guarantee of %500 million dollars to Solyndra, a solar panel producer. They went bankrupt right after using the federal money. Obama also blocked a Canadian oil pipeline that would have brought millions of barrels of crude into the country for environmental concerns.

White House Spokesman Jay Carney said,

“This is a recurrent problem and it’s a problem that reinforces the need that (Obama) identified back when he was a candidate for a comprehensive energy strategy,”

Average gasoline prices have climbed to their highest February levels on record, hitting $3.53 per gallon last week, according to MasterCard SpendingPulse data.

Republican Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum took a jab at Obama about gas prices saying,

“Folks are just starting to be able to breathe a little as the economy starts to come back a little bit, unemployment starts to go down. All of a sudden they are going to be hit with the same force of wind that hit us in 2008 in the summer that caused us to go into a recession. All because of the radical environmentalist policies of this president,”

President Obama will be quick to point out that many factors outside of his control will influence high gas prices including higher demand from Asian countries like China and stability issues in the middle east, but historically the President takes the bulk of the blame for high gas prices.

Do you think Obama is to blame for the high gas prices?