President Joe Biden is proving that patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.
Recall that over the last couple of months, Biden has been desperately trying to explain away the high cost of gasoline. When people didn’t buy Democrats’ scapegoating of oil companies, he claimed it was Vladimir Putin’s fault. Never mind how far gas prices had risen before Putin invaded Ukraine.
But people were not fooled, and so last week, Biden began appealing to our sense of patriotism. The new message was that when you pay $7 for gas, you are paying for the “liberal world order.”
Big surprise — even that message isn’t getting the desired results. So this weekend, Biden’s team has found a new scapegoat: your local gas station.
Yes, the Shell station down the street from you is now supposed to do its part to support the American way of life by taking a large loss on a gallon of gasoline:
My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril.
Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now.
— President Biden (@POTUS) July 2, 2022
If I were Biden, I would not be counting on gas stations to bail him out politically ahead of the election. And yes, that’s what this is really about, isn’t it?
No, your local Wawa isn’t holding American foreign policy hostage by overcharging for gas. Believe it or not, most gas stations don’t make much money on gasoline. According to the National Association of Convenience Stores, your local gas station might be marking up the product by as much as 35 cents a gallon, or by as little as zero. Even at the high end, that is hardly an amount worth getting upset over.
Gasoline retailers are getting squeezed by high gas prices because it’s causing people to buy gas less frequently. Their entire goal in selling gasoline is to get you to stop in and buy products with better profit margins — candy, soda, coffee, chili dogs, small bottles of Advil, crispitos, and overpriced luxury bottled water that claims to have special properties, among other things.
In some contexts, gas station owners will deliberately take a small loss on gasoline in order to get more foot traffic into their convenience stores. But should they take a substantial loss in order to protect Biden from the consequences of his own pervasive and multifaceted anti-fossil fuel agenda? Of course not.
The Biden aides who make his decisions and run his Twitter feed have once again chosen an inapt scapegoat. They ought to look in the mirror instead.
For years, Democrats have been rooting for higher gas prices. It’s part of their agenda to combat global warming. Now, they have gotten their wish, and they are scared of the political consequences. Suddenly, patriotism and American soft power require that we get that oil flowing again. Democrats are now so worried about losing the average voter that they are not afraid to risk angering the environmental extremists in their ranks.
You can think of that as a political market signal.
