Buy a Hybrid

Mark Steyn has a funny column over at National Review Online on the Democrats' apparent indifference to the economic peril our country faces. In the course of his column he tosses in some biting criticism of Mr. Obama's response to a man who asked him at a recent Town Hall if gas prices would ever go back down:

For a sense of Democrat insouciance to American decline, let us turn to the president himself. The other day, Barack Obama was in the oddly apt town of Fairless Hills, Pa., at what the White House billed as one of those ersatz “town hall” discussions into which republican government has degenerated. He was asked a question by a citizen of the United States.

The cost of a gallon of gas has doubled on Obama’s watch, and this gentleman asked, “Is there a chance of the price being lowered again?” As the Associated Press reported it, the president responded “laughingly”: “I know some of these big guys, they’re all still driving their big SUVs. You know, they got their big monster trucks and everything. . . . If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting eight miles a gallon — (laughter) . . .

That’s how the official White House transcript reported it: Laughter. Big yuks. “So, like I said, if you’re getting eight miles a gallon you may want to think about a trade-in. You can get a great deal.”

Hey, thanks! You’ve been a great audience. I’ll be here all year. Don’t forget to tip your Democrat hat-check girl on the way out: At four bucks a gallon, it’s getting harder for volunteers to drive elderly voters from the cemetery to the polling station. Relax, I’m just jerking your crank, buddy! And it’s not four bucks per, it’s only three-ninety-eight. That’s change you can believe in!...

America, 2011: A man gets driven in a motorcade to sneer at a man who has to drive himself to work. A guy who has never generated a dime of wealth, never had to make payroll, never worked at any job other than his own tireless self-promotion literally cannot comprehend that out there beyond the far fringes of the motorcade outriders are people who drive a long distance to jobs whose economic viability is greatly diminished when getting there costs twice as much as the buck-eighty-per-gallon it cost back at the dawn of the Hopeychangey Era.

So what? Your fault. Should have gone to Columbia and Harvard and become a community organizer.

The fact is President Obama doesn't want lower gas prices. He said during the campaign that $4.00 a gallon gas is just fine with him, presumably because it will force us away from fossil energy sources toward windmills and such. Windmills aren't going to help the folks who have a thirty mile commute to work every day. Nor is paying $30,000 to $40,000 for a hybrid much of an answer for workers barely able to meet their bills each month. And what does he suggest to those who heat their homes with fuel oil? Switch to electricity or solar panels?

Of course, maybe a man who has never had a real job in his life, who has always been provided for by political cronies and taxpayers, can not be expected to understand the circumstances in which most people live.