AP’s own analysis, confirmed by an outside expert, found no link between increased drilling and lower prices. This means that, yet again, the Republicans are proposing solutions (more oil production) to serious national problems (high gas prices), and the solutions have nothing to do with the problem at hand. They’re simply proposals to pander to big business, which is what the GOP always does.

It’s really quite scary that we have a party so bought off by big business. The Democratic party has its problems as well in this area – Big Pharma owns both parties, and Wall Street runs a pretty close second – but the Republicans raise pandering to an art form. They consistently propose sometimes-convincing-sounding solutions to problems, and the solutions have zero in common with solving the actual problem.

Abstinence education and banning birth control come to mind as ridiculous examples of ways to “decrease abortions.” Uh, no, quite the opposite in fact. But it doesn’t matter to the GOP if their solutions solve our problems as there’s always an ulterior motive of sucking up to some fringe constituency.

AP:

When you put the inflation-adjusted price of gas on the same chart as U.S. oil production since 1976, the numbers sometimes go in the same direction, sometimes in opposite directions. If drilling for more oil meant lower prices, the lines on the chart would consistently go in opposite directions. A basic statistical measure of correlation found no link between the two, and outside statistical experts confirmed those calculations.

This sounded awfully familiar to me, so I searched around our archives, and voila. The Republicans made a similar argument about federal regulations hurting the employment numbers, and how if we just get rid of the regulations, the jobs will come streaming back. The Associated Press says no:

Is regulation strangling the American entrepreneur? Several Republican presidential candidates say so. The numbers don’t. THE FACTS: Labor Department data show that only a tiny percentage of companies that experience large layoffs cite government regulation as the reason. Since Barack Obama took office, just two-tenths of 1 percent of layoffs have been due to government regulation, the data show.

Always remember, the Republicans aren’t about solving problems for the the average American. They’re about solving problems for the average corporate CEO.