While nobody was looking – Senate cuts deal on Energy plans

The problem is that the deal actually sucks.

Over the summer a group of five GOP and five Democratic senators, dubbed the Gang of 10, hammered out a comprehensive energy proposal. And now, after taking withering heat from both left and right, the idea is gaining support.

Yeah, a compromise that really only benefits the Democrats and those who oppose “big oil” and all of its supposed evils. Sure, it has allowances for drilling in the compromise, but the drilling is severely limited and does not include the outer continental shelf or any drilling in the Alaskan shelf or ANWR. Basically the Dems get all of those mostly unproven and extremely expensive alternative energy sources to fund, and the GOP gets to drill….just not in the places that we’ve been wanting to drill.

Now, MSNBC will make a big deal over this and claim that the senate is finally trying to break away from “partisan politics” except that they don’t really tell you that the scales are severely unbalanced. The gang of 10 is made up of five republicans who have broken away from the vast majority of their base in order to appease the democrats who oppose the “drill here, drill now” mantra. However, the five democrats who are maing this “deal” aren’t in the minority of their party because we already know that the left side of the aisle was willing to accept this deal when it first appeared.

So, while we were all watching the DNC and RNC coverage the senate has decided to cut a seriously bad deal to try and end the energy issue. The dems will be able to claim “look, we drilled!” and the GOP will be able to say “Look! we compromised!’ except the GOP side hasn’t figured out that they, once again, are bad end of the deal.