If the only tool you have is a hammer, it's said, you treat every problem as a nail. The Democrats' response to the oil price spike is an instructive insight to their worldview. First they want to impose an "excess oil profits tax" as they did in 1980, which did nothing to solve the problem of lack of supply.
Then they began to scapegoat "speculators" as the cause of high oil prices.
Then Mme. Pelosi grouses about "the two oilmen in the White House, and prices have quadrupled since they have been there." She takes no ownership of her own Party's responsibility in shutting down every attempt to bring on more energy supplies for the Nation for the last generation -- and conveniently neglects the $1.60 jump in gasoline at the pump since she became Speaker last year.
Now they want to nationalize the oil companies "to make sure prices go down." Investor's Business Daily nailed that fallacy in an editorial this week.
The defective world view of the Democratic progressives is that prosperity is fixed and can be taken for granted. And therefore, nothing need be done to provide for our growing economy. It is also instructive that the Progressives have also sought to sue OPEC. One would expect nothing less with trial lawyers constituting one leg of the Democratic Party stool.
Having a complete distrust and knowledge of free markets, it doesn't even occur to them that drilling for oil and developing our resources is a logical next step -- a step that should have been taken in 1980.