BrianGarst.com

Falling oil prices – get ready for this – are a dastardly scheme to aid Republicans in November! Or so ponders CNN’s Bill Schneider.

In a September 15 report for “The Situation Room,” CNN reporter Bill Schneider wondered if the current decrease in gas prices has been timed to help Republicans in the midterm elections. He ominously asked:

Schneider: “The drop in prices may last a couple of months, long enough to get through the November election. Could that be what the oil companies want?”

Does this mean that high prices in the spring and summer were an attempt to hurt the Republicans? This theme, that oil companies are trying to aid the GOP, was repeated or insinuated throughout the report. In the segment, which aired at 4:40PM, anchor Wolf Blitzer introduced Schneider by noting that a form of smog reducing gasoline will be pulled “as we head into the fall and the November elections.”

Will this gas price hysteria never cease? When gas prices go up, oil companies are evil gougers. When gas prices go down, oil companies are evil meddlers helping their evil Republican friends.

Never mind the falling price of oil. Never mind the end of summer and the decline in demand for gasoline that always follows.

Oh no, we will stand no market explanations here. Clearly these evil oil giants have nearly omnipotent market powers to raise and lower prices as they please (which they inexplicably never bothered to use until Bush came into office) and they are now using it to thwart the Democrats carefully laid plans to blame rising gas prices on Bush.

Yeah, you know what’s coming. I can’t help…it just has to be said.

Nuanced.

Election '06