Obama Targets Gingrich in Energy Speech

In a speech to students at the University of Miami Thursday, President Obama appeared to be ridiculing Republican presidential nominee Newt Gingrich, by telling his audience, “It’s the easiest thing in the world to make phony election-year promises about lower gas prices.”

Though the president did not name Mr. Gingrich specifically, the former speaker’s energy policy, to which he himself alluded during Wednesday night’s debate in Arizona, asserts that, by drilling and eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans can “look forward to $2.50 a gallon gasoline.”

During his campaign, Mr. Gingrich is producing videos highlighting his detailed solutions for America. Below is his most recent video on American energy independence and its relationship to jobs.

In his speech, President Obama said, “anyone who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about — or just isn’t telling you the truth.” He continued to say that the problem of high gas prices “won’t be solved in one year, it won’t be solved in one term, it may not be solved in one decade.”

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Responding directly to the president’s attack, Speaker Gingrich said, “Instead of offering a real plan to lower the cost of gasoline, President Obama offered excuses and fantasies.”

While campaigning in Kennewick, Washington, Mr. Gingrich criticized Mr. Obama:

Blaming instability in the Middle East for high gas prices is not leadership. Neither is promising magic future technologies that won’t satisfy today’s energy needs. The fact is that President Obama could today, with a stroke of his pen, begin the process of bringing online 2.4 million new barrels of oil per day to US supplies – more than is transported through the Straits of Hormuz from the Middle East – simply by authorizing the construction of the Keystone Pipeline, re-opening the Gulf of Mexico, and permitting exploration and production in the Chukchi Sea and National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska.