In his speech before the Newspapers Association of America/American Society of News Editors Wednesday, likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney accused the president of changing positions to get reelected. 

For instance, Romney charged that “as president,” Obama “delayed the development of our oil and coal and natural gas. Now, as candidate Obama, he says he favors an energy policy that adopts an all-of-the-above approach.”

That’s not exactly right.

Yes, Obama still says he’s in favor of an all-of-the-above energy policy, but that hasn’t slowed him down in his pursuit of his very-few-of-the-above policy.

Back in 2008, Senator Obama explained that under his energy plan, electricity prices would “necessarily skyrocket.”

The explosion in costs wouldn’t be a bug of his plan either, but a feature. The idea under so-called cap-and-trade is that if you tax fossil fuels, you will, over time, reduce the use of fossil fuels. It’s really basic economics. One wishes the president saw the logic of this proposition when it came to taxing business and investment as well. But that’s a topic for a different column.

The president’s defenders have long complained that it’s unfair to dredge up this old soundbite, particularly in a climate of gas-price outrage, because Republicans — and a lot of Democrats — successfully prevented cap-and-trade from ever becoming law.

Absent cap-and-trade, they claim, he is pursuing an all-of-the-above strategy. Coal! Oil! Natural gas! Solar! Wind! And, of course, algae, algae, algae! We’re doing it all, Obama says.

Just the other day, Vice President Joe Biden insisted that “our energy policy’s the best it’s ever been.” Why? Because, he said, we’re doing “everything,” i.e., all of the above, to make energy affordable.

Except that’s simply not true. It’s not remotely true. A new rule from the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, according to an Associated Press analysis, will force 32 mostly coal-fired power plants to shut down and threaten to close 36 others. Moreover, the new “blackout” rule will effectively prevent the creation of any new coal-fired plants in America unless they adopt new technologies that will make it unprofitable to burn coal at all. So there’s that.