Greenwire reports, in a piece “Energy Policy: Democrats plot strategy for putting GOP on its heels,” that:

Democrats seemed at their [Denver] gathering to have regained their confidence that the party’s energy message — built primarily around renewable energy and green jobs — will ultimately win out with voters. On Capitol Hill, congressional Democrats say they will try to corner the Republicans by offering them votes on their own agenda with Democratic priorities mixed in. “We’re about to do a political reverse takedown on the Republicans,” said Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). Top House Democrats say that shortly after Congress reconvenes, they will put on the floor a piece of legislation that will include an expansion of offshore drilling but also a renewable electricity mandate, energy-efficiency standards for buildings and oil industry tax provisions. Some Democrats have started to describe the legislation and the broader message on energy as “all of the above” — a term first coined by House Republicans to describe their own legislation.“We’ll see whether the proponents of all of the above can take yes for an answer,” said David Sandalow, a former Clinton administration official and an energy adviser to the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Democrats said their bill is a work in progress and offered few specifics, but they expressed confidence it would force Republicans into a tough spot. “That’s going to be a very difficult vote for a lot of these people,” Markey said. “We’ll put it all in there, and if somehow or other we get the majority of Republicans to vote for that, we’ll have a revolution on our hands, and if we don’t, we’re going to have a revolution November 4th on our hands.”

While lacking specifics as yet, the Dems are a little schizophrenic on the matter, downplaying drilling (which eases prices) because it won’t do everything, and pushing cost-increasing renewable mandates – which have a proven track record of doing even less – on the grounds that mandating renewables will create jobs. Apparently no jobs will flow from Congress allowing us to drill.

This is the argument of a child, to put it bluntly — though politics is often rather well-suited for such approaches.

Still, Europe has instituted the policies that the Democrats insist be part of any consideration of drilling. Europe’s unemployment rate is officially somewhat less than twice our own, though this should be taken quite loosely given how they are notorious for excluding certain groups from the figures, on top of the make-work schemes which proliferate. Renewable energy kings Spain (Number One wind energy producer in the world) and Germany (Number Three, behind the U.S.) claim 9.9-percent and 7.4-percent unemployment, respectively. Great credit for this goes to Europe having priced itself out of competitiveness through these energy taxes and mandates — as its various threats of a trade war against us, if we don’t follow suit, attests.

No one has helped themselves economically through these measures, no matter how much lipstick one slathers on the figures (for example, one ploy is to claim steel jobs as “green jobs” because, well, there’s steel in windmills; if their arguments were sound, would they be reduced to such stunts?).

Europe, specifically, has not created net jobs through these taxes and mandates, and windmill manufacturer Vestas even closed plants there recently.

In short, the arguments being made in support of this approach do not withstand scrutiny; the philosophy/ ideology underlying them – but not being advanced as the rationale — fare even more poorly. Hopefully the House pro-energy types are prepared to ask the right questions.