Democrats “create a bunch of victims” and then “ride to the rescue as the savior,” Rush Limbaugh says, adding that President Barack Obama is setting himself up to be the ultimate hero.
Even though Obama consistently has opposed domestic oil drilling, he now says he will tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to play the hero and save his re-election campaign, Limbaugh said on his radio show on Thursday.
“Obama has just announced that the United States and Britain are going to release oil from their strategic reserves,” Limbaugh said. “This is going to have absolutely no impact whatsoever. It is a purely political move from the guy who says we can’t drill.”
President Jimmy Carter established the oil reserve in the late 1970s following the OPEC embargo to ensure that the United States always would have oil in the event of a cutoff or shortage.
However, Limbaugh insists there is no shortage.
“The purpose of the strategic oil reserve is to provide the nation an emergency capacity,” Limbaugh said. “We don’t have an emergency, other than Obama’s re-election is in trouble. That’s the emergency. There is no shortage of oil. The emergency is the price of gasoline going up and the toll that is taking on Obama’s approval numbers. That’s the emergency.”
“The strategic oil reserve does not exist to lower gasoline prices. That’s not its purpose. The strategic reserve is to have a supply of oil when this nation is cut off, or is being threatened with a cut off of imported oil, or when there is a genuine shortage and when our national security depends on it.”
“We don’t have an emergency! There is not a shortage. There’s not an oil shortage. There’s not a crisis. This is simply a flailing attempt to get the price down,” Limbaugh insisted.
“Doing this now — releasing oil from our strategic reserves — is a sign of pure panic. The truth of the matter is the left is in a state of panic. Those two polls — The New York Times and The Washington Post this week — have shaken them to their core.”
To bolster his point, Limbaugh cited the state dinner Obama hosted at the White House Wednesday night in honor of British Prime Minister David Cameron.
“There were 34 Obama fundraisers at this state dinner — bundlers, people who have either donated or raised . . . a minimum of $500,000.
“It was a campaign event,” and Cameron was simply a pawn, Limbaugh said.
“They used this guy, purely and simply, as an Obama campaign moment, as an election ploy. And releasing oil from the strategic reserves is nothing more than theater. This is not even a short-term solution. All this really means is that we’re going to have to refill the reserves at a much higher price. This is an action that is going to cost us money. Not that anybody in the regime cares about that.”
This whole thing is “nothing more than a cheap political ploy that’s going to end up costing money,” he said.
“There is not enough oil in the strategic reserves to last long enough . . . to have any kind of permanent, meaningful impact on the price of gasoline,” Limbaugh said.
The Obama administration knows “this is not going to affect the price of gasoline. Not for the long term and not significantly.
“The strategic reserve is like a thimble compared to the daily or weekly use of oil in this country,” Limbaugh said.
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