Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions ‘Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less’ mantra has struck a nerve causing some in the conservative movement to speculate that this could be the answer to the left’s MoveOn.org.

From the Politico.

“The left has been blocking domestic energy production for decades (drilling, refineries, nuclear, etc), so Newt Gingrich’s ‘Drill here. Drill now. Pay less’ message tapped into a very simple frustration around which the right could rally,” said Jon Henke, a strategic manager of New Media Strategies and co-founder of The Next Right in an e-mail. “When you can tell a story about a unifying grievance, you can galvanize people online.”

The unifying grievance, of course, is the sharp rise in gas prices, and the unifying cause came into being on May 20, when American Solutions, the 527 started by Newt Gingrich, posted a petition that called for increased drilling as a way of lowering gas prices. “We… the undersigned citizens of the United States, petition the U.S. Congress to act immediately to lower gasoline prices (and diesel and other fuel prices) by authorizing the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries,” it declared.

Within a week, the Web traffic for American Solutions skyrocketed, even beating out MoveOn.org for a couple of days, which led blogger Soren Dayton, who used to work for McCain, to ask, “Is Drill Now the conservative MoveOn?”  (The liberal Web behemoth—with over three million members and a proven ability to generate massive amounts of small donor cash quickly—started as a petition to “move on” from Clinton’s impeachment.)

At the very least the popularity of this campaign has led to debate on whether or not our anti-drilling policy is wise in the light of skyrocketing fuel prices.

 

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