GOP Bets on Energy Message to Power Midterm Turnout – Inside Sources

Facing a tough midterm cycle with a president struggling in the polls, Republicans are reaching for energy policy as a way to boost GOP turnout and hold back a possible blue wave in November.

At the Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas, speaker after speaker talked about expanding energy production to lower costs while reminding voters of the Green New Deal policies put in place by Democrats.

“Our predecessors killed the American Dream with trillions of dollars in waste and green energy scams, the greatest scams in American history, green energy,” President Donald Trump told the convention. “With the help of our great energy workers here in Texas, our country is producing more oil and gas today than ever before.”

“More than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined,” Trump added.

Democrats respond by pointing out that energy costs have soared since Trump began the war against Iran in February, with diesel prices above $6 a gallon.

“The cost of diesel just hit a record high, the price of regular gas is up nearly 50 percent since the war began,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor. “If Trump continues his current course in Iran, I can promise you this as well: the costs will just keep piling up.”

Republicans counter that the effects of the war with Iran are temporary, while Democrats have shown they support a policy of permanently suppressing U.S. energy production. For example, the Trump administration recently ended a Biden-era mandate requiring fossil fuel power plants to curb carbon emissions by 2039 or shut down. That move alone, the White House says, will produce $310 billion in energy cost savings across the economy.

“American energy was under attack,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told the convention. But now, “we’ve unleashed American energy.”

The American energy sector, which had a significant presence at the convention, is also encouraging Republicans to make energy dominance part of the general election push.

“Republicans have an opportunity this November to make the contrast clear: unleash American energy, cut costly regulations, and dismantle the Green New Deal policies that raise the cost of electricity, transportation, food, and nearly everything Americans buy,” said Jason Isaac with the American Energy Institute.

“Energy is the economy, and affordable, reliable American energy should be at the center of the debate.”

Republicans believe concerns about electric rates and energy supplies can help them in state-level elections, too. Austin Knudsen, the Montana attorney general who chairs the Republican Attorneys General Association, touted the efforts of more than 20 Republican attorneys general in opposing New York’s unsuccessful attempt to implement a Climate Superfund Law, which would mandate fines for traditional energy companies while holding them liable for climate change.

“Today, your Republican attorney generals are making sure that California and New York don’t get to set policy for the rest of the country,” Knudsen said. “For example, 21 of your Republican attorney generals brought suit to block a New York law requiring traditional energy companies to pay $75 billion for climate adaptation infrastructure, holding them strictly liable for past global emissions.”

With six weeks until Election Day, it’s too early to tell if the Republicans’ pitch on energy will spur the GOP base to show up at the polls.

Many GOP activists gathered at the convention told InsideSources that GOP efforts to lower costs, including energy costs, were not being communicated as effectively to voters this cycle. Many said that winning the war with Iran was the best strategy to lower energy costs.

“We are energy self-sufficient, we are a net exporter and we have more oil and gas than God,” said Christopher Ryan, a member of the Mass GOP State Committee.

“That’s not a problem, we lack planning capacity because oil is a commodity and when you have war in an area where 20% of the world’s supply is exported, you will have an affect. Once that’s opened up, prices are going to drop rapidly.”

Trump himself said on the first night that oil prices “will be going down as soon as we win the war with Iran, which is taking place right now.”

“We’ll win it,” Trump said. “We’re winning it.”