Rising oil prices, slumping economy, soaring food prices and a weakening dollar, have many people taking a new look at drilling for oil in America. Finally, voters are screaming drill and demanding to break off our abusive relationship with the Middle East. But so far, neither candidate as caught up with the now’s demand. Both are still appealing to yester years enviro-nuts and little do they know the atmosphere has dramatically changed. Gone are the days of blaming the big greedy oil companies and tweaking economic policies. The simple and basic issue is make oil affordable, now.

Recent polling data from Gallup show the percentage of voters blaming oil companies for skyrocketing gasoline prices has dropped from 34 percent to 20 percent over the past year. At the same time, support for more drilling in U.S. coastal and wilderness areas has increased to 57 percent from 41 percent.

The surging oil prices are a natural product of supply and demand. Emerging economies in China and India are now taking their own sizable chunk of the demand; thus, dwindling the supply. What is there to do? Well, it certainly isn’t cap-and-trade policies that, thankfully, was defeated in last week’s Senate vote. Instead, we have our own ‘Middle East’ smack dab in the middle of the good ol’ U.S. of A.

That’s right, even bigger actually.

The Bakken fields beneath North Dakota, Montana, and Canada hold an estimated 400 billion barrels of oil. In comparison, Saudi Arabia’s biggest field, Gahawar, has an estimated 55 billion barrels, while ANWR has an estimated 10.4 billion barrels.

Hat tip to Mark Perry at the Carpe Diem blog site for these figures. Perry also is reporting a Bureau of Land Management study showing 279 million acres under federal management where oil and gas could potentially be extracted. But more than half of this is totally off limits. Off-shore, where another 86 billion barrels lie in wait, is also restricted. Then there’s liquefied natural gas, oil shale, and the various coal-to-liquid carbon-capture and sequestration technologies that would be priced out of the market by cap-and-trade.

The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal, but we can’t produce. We’re still the world’s third-largest oil producer, but we could be the Saudi Arabia of oil if our companies were free to drill. Oil CEOs like Rex Tillerson of ExxonMobil and David O’Reilly of Chevron keep saying this. But politicians aren’t heeding their message.

There, the oil crisis is solved, not to mention a slew of new jobs and a new industry to invest from the ample amount of profits in alternative fuels that may help alleviate any future crisis. But our economy depends on oil. Let’s work on getting the oil first, then we can explore new fuel alternatives later.  

This is GOP territory. A grand opportunity to ride the wave of concern, outrage and bewilderment over shrinking wallets and the rising cost to live. A chance to chart out a new course that could save America’s economy by totally re-establishing American currency, create a new job market force, invest in newer technology and solve the energy crisis and crush the inflation problem. The only problem is, who will lead.

(I remember Fred Thompson mentioning this very thing during one of his campaign stops and was ridiculed for being a ignorant caveman. Kind of funny now isn’t it.)