President Obama incessantly claims energy open-mindedness, insisting that his policy is “all of the above.” Except, of course, for drilling: 
 
 ●off the Mid-Atlantic coast (as Virginia, for example, wants); 
 
 ●off the Florida Gulf Coast (instead, the Castro brothers will drill near there); 
 
 ●in the broader Gulf of Mexico (where drilling in 2012 is expected to drop 30 percent below pre-moratorium forecasts); 
 
 ●in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (more than half the size of England, the drilling footprint being the size of Dulles International Airport); 
 
 ●on federal lands in the Rockies (where leases are down 70 percent since Obama took office). As a result, U.S. oil production has risen significantly over the past three years, reversing a decline over decades, while natural gas production has exploded. “The American people aren’t stupid,” Obama said (Feb. 23), mocking “Drill, baby, drill.” The “only solution,” he averred in yet another major energy speech last week, is that “we start using less — that lowers the demand, prices come down.” Yet five paragraphs later he claimed that regardless of “how much oil we produce at home . that’s not going to set the price of gas worldwide.” 
 
 So: Decreasing U.S. demand will lower oil prices, but increasing U.S. supply will not? Obama says of drilling: “That’s not a plan.” Of course it’s a plan.
– The US president may not directly control gas prices, but Barack Obama's "disdain" for oil is still hurting Americans terribly, writes Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post. Restricting drilling, vetoing the Keystone pipeline, and similar anti-oil moves are killing thousands of local jobs, hurting relations with Canada, and sending billions of dollars to Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Trying to develop alternative fuels of the future is a waste of time and resources. "Drilling is the single most important thing we can do to spur growth at home while strengthening our hand abroad," writes Krauthammer. High gas prices are "a constant reminder of three years of a rigid, fatuous, fantasy-driven energy policy that has rendered us scandalously dependent and excessively vulnerable."  But calls for more drilling are just "intellectual bankruptcy," argues Paul Krugman in the New York Times. America is already in a "hydrocarbon boom," with oil and natural gas production on the rise, but that has not stopped oil prices from soaring. That's because increasing demand from developing countries and Mideast war worries "easily outweigh any downward pressure on prices from rising US production." The hydrocarbon boom has also had little effect on jobs—the 70,000 jobs gained since the middle of the last decade represent just .05% of total US employment. So why the GOP focus on fossil fuels? One, the oil and gas lobby. And, two, conservatives have no other ideas. "And intellectual bankruptcy, I’m sorry to say, is a problem that no amount of drilling and fracking can solve."