The high price of energy is due largely, but not entirely, to the fact that supply is not keeping up with demand. The Democrats have proposed a number of measures to reduce demand (conservation, moving toward alternative sources of energy), a number of measures that would reduce supply even further (taxing oil companies, nationalizing oil refineries and companies - see, for instance, here), and some which just seem both bizarre and desperate (suing OPEC).
Barack Obama speaks for most Democrats when he acknowledges that he's actually in favor of high energy prices (See his response at the 2:30 mark of this interview), he just wishes the prices would have risen more gradually. The left wants high energy prices in hopes they'll encourage the development of energy alternatives, but Obama advocates in the CNBC interview that to mitigate the impact of high fuel costs the government give people a check to help them pay their energy bills. It's hard to understand how high prices will encourage conservation and alternative energy sources if people are going to be given money to offset the higher prices.
The Republican solution to our energy crisis is to increase supply until we can develop alternatives to petroleum. This means building more refineries, building more nuclear plants, and drilling for the oil that lies both off our shores and within our borders.
What a pickle we're in: The Republicans have the better ideas but they lack leadership, including, sadly, in the White House (see Michelle Malkin's piece on this here). The Democrats have strong leadership but they lack good ideas. Would that we could have the best of both parties.
Maybe that's a reason to vote for McCain - he's essentially a Democrat who has come to see the need to drill offshore (but, oddly, not in ANWR) and wants to build more nuclear power plants. Now that's a unity candidate.
RLC