Give Me Fuel, Give Me Fire, Give Me That Which I Desire

Well, there's a twist: the Clinton/McCain double-reverse pander on the gax tax is experiencing actual blowback. First the general economic community pointed out the folly, then Clinton-friendly economists did, then journalists on a conference call roll the campaign's flacks back on their heels.

"Every penny counts," [pollster Geoff] Garin said, and insisted that the holiday will save $70 per driver (not $30, as Obama claims)."If you live in the center of the city it may not be a big deal."

"There's a real gap here of how some people see this from 30,000 feet", he continued, and how North Carolina and Indiana residents "experience it every day."

"What driving do they want them to stop doing?" he asked.

Ooh-er, take that, you beltway-bound snobs! You can imagine the wheat stalk idling between his teeth as Garin rocks back and forth on his porch and cradles his shotgun. Meanwhile Michael Bloomberg, who is an urban billionaire (and whose state Republicans favor suspending the state gas tax), adds his own spicy demogoguery:

Bloomberg praised officials who opposed the "summer break on gasoline taxes which would help Chavez, Qaddafi and other people like that. I don't know why anybody would want to do it."

Can the efforts of basically every journalist and economist convince people that the tax holiday his a bad idea? I feel like they can't. How else to explain this mega-pander by Hillary Clinton, caught by Megan McArdle?

Hillary Clinton wants to sue OPEC for not producing oil from wells they haven't drilled yet. Next: a lawsuit against Ford for not building us the cool flying cars we were promised in The Jetsons. I WANT MY FLYING CAR!!!!

Question: Is Hillary Clinton still a senator? Is John McCain? Why haven't they introduced gas tax holiday legislation if it's such an urgent need for the yeomen of Indiana and North Carolina? This isn't one of those "when I'm president" promises—if you want relief for summer 2008, then legislate to make relief happen for summer 2008. The only reason you wouldn't is if it's, you know, a poll-tested fraud.