Romney vows to nuke China and India and invade and conquer all the major oil producers

Chinese traffic jam--worst in history--Aug. 14-26, 2011

Well, no, he didn't. But he blamed President Obama for the high gas prices we have now, and vowed things would be different during his reign. But to accomplish that, he'd have to do what I said in my headline, and he said he's accomplish that, therefore he plans to nuke China and India and invade and conquer the OPEC nations.

Of course what he's promised is to stop stopping American oil producers from producing oil, as he's accued Obama of doing. Including blaming Obama for slowing down Gulf oil platform operations like the one BP owned that blew up. Does anyone outside of the states around the Guilf remember that?

But suppose we opened the taps, drilling offshore, in Alaska, everywhere, dumping our reserve capacity into the refineries, and built the Keystone pipeline..

First, America is no longer a major oil producer. Second, the burgeoning middle classes of China and India--each the size of America's total population--are buying cars and driving them. Third, unless we nationalized our oil companies, oil production in America is in the hands of private, for-profit, multinationals.

So the modest increase in oil supply would be promptly sold on the world market--much of it snapped up by China and India--at prices set by the oil cartel, OPEC.

Change to American gas prices: pretty much nada. American gas prices are the same as prices in Europe, except for us subsidizing drivers more here with a lower gas tax. But on a day by day basis, except for that tax differential, Americans pay the same at the pump as their French, German, and Brit counterparts--and have done so at least since the mid-1990s.

These facts were pointed out by all the pundits on Fox News--back when gas prices soared during Bush II's presidency. They only started lying about it when prices rose during a Democratic presidency.

And nearly all the Congressional Republicans always vote against raising gas mileage requirements, of course. Now their mantra has become God, Gays, Guns, and Gas....

Therefore, since Romney et al claim they can affect gas prices, they'll have to eliminate the competition for gas: China and India...and OPEC.

There are great Republican candidate out there...

Just none who are running.

Why not?

Because they don't think they can beat Obama this time around.

Nobody Republican in the public eye will say so--they'll say Obama's doomed because no president gets reelected with unemployment this high (can you say FDR?), and then launch into a litany of his deficits as a president and as a human being.

But 'andsome is as 'andsome does.

If Republicans were really sure of his defeat, those hotter candidates would have tossed their hats in the ring. Candidates that excite Republicans. The current crop doesn't.

This doesn't make Obama a shoe-in in November. The Republican core strategy is to make him the subject not their guy, and a loose assortment of billionaires are going to flood the airwaves with a superslick campaign of ads and pundits for hire and a TV channel dedicated to pretty much nothing but his defeat, hoping to make him so hated, so much the personification of everything that's gone wrong in voters' lives, that they'll take a chance on the not very likeable candidate who emerges from the current tussle--still almost certainly Mitt Romney.

And the guys who aren't trying to get the GOP nomination know this. Yet they aren't running.

They're voting with their feet.