Way back when he was running for President, Obama made what Beezer considered a major mistake in putting all his energy eggs in the sustainable/renewable basket.

We didn’t disagree with him so much as we thought he’d get royally skewered by McCain/Palin for being too narrow in his solution choices.  McCain, for example, wanted to rely more on nuclear power.  Palin, speaking from her position as Alaskan Governor, had credibility when she said the US had years of oil and gas that could be discovered and used.

This was before the economy collapsed as a result of Wall Street’s greedy excesses.  The recession torpedoed the GOP better than anything Obama could do himself.   And it took the ball off energy, which otherwise would have cost Obama the election.

So today President Obama holds a press conference about an $8 billion guarantee his administration is going to provide to build the first nuclear power plant in almost 30 years.  And along the way he mentions that we need to make “tough decisions” to discover and use more domestic oil and gas.  Also along the way he points out that, in the long run, it’s going to be sustainable clean energy that will need to power America, and his administration has already made the single largest contribution in our history to these energy sources within the Recovery Act funding.

The President, in other words, has collected the Republican energy platform and neatly tucked it into his own.   He remembers that his poll numbers slipped in a major way during the campaign when he ignored nuclear and domestic fossil fuel energy as components in his energy policy.

Today he announced an energy policy that even Republicans will have difficulty opposing.  Using all available energy sources wisely, the campaign polls showed clearly, is what the majority of Americans want.

Considering that Obama is pushing to take on Wall Street more directly (a popular position with the public), this energy policy speech (which will be popular with the same public) will give the party of “No” some heartburn if they try the same tactic that they used on health care.

Obama can only hope the GOP tries the same tactics to oppose financial regulation reform and energy reform.  If they do, what the public will remember in the next election cycle won’t be that health care reform foundered, but that the GOP tried to stop any and all reform.   One doesn’t win elections by catering only to big, status quo private corporations.

“There was a moment a year ago when Obama, with his enormous political capital, might have been able to achieve this ambitious agenda, and, building on these successes, go on to deal with America’s other problems. But anger about the bailout, confusion between the bailout (which didn’t restart lending, as it was supposed to do) and the stimulus (which did what it was supposed to do, but was too small), and disappointment about mounting job losses, has vastly circumscribed his room for maneuver.”

So writes Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in an article that appeared recently in the website “Project Syndicate.”  Stiglitz served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors from 1995 to 1997 and his most recent book, “Freefall:  America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World’s Economy” is a best seller.

Obama recently called upon another economist, former Fed Chair Paul Volcker, to help shore up his support for financial regulatory reform.  It would probably be a good idea if he pulled out Stiglitz too, and used this well respected economist to both instruct Congress (and the public in turn) about how best to resurrect our economy and the nation’s well being along with it.

The GOP is a captured, bought and paid for, party.  It’s masters are the very oligopolic industries that most need reform and that means Obama will never get any political support from that group no matter what he does.  But he need not go it entirely alone.  He needs to continue bringing into the spotlight respected, non government leadership like that represented by Volcker and Stiglitz.  

Both these men are well spoken.  They can address the issues correctly and in a way that the public at large can understand.  They can frame the issues in ways that will unmask the GOP for who they truly are:  Representatives for large, trans-national corporations. 

Again, thanks to that fount of economic thought, Economist’s View for highlighting Stiglitz’s article.

It’s not a coincidence that the Republican Party is going bust along with the concept that unfettered free markets work best.

The current global recession is a direct result of an ideology that free markets, if just left alone by government regulation and supervision, would best be able to create sustained growth, jobs and income.  Although this was not always so, the current version of the GOP aligned its politics totally with this concept.

So what happened?  Reality happened.  The ideology was flawed.  Unregulated financial markets, in particular, will collapse if not monitored by government.  It’s happened before and it helped cause the Great Depression.  Strict regulatory regimes were created because of the Great Depression.

But the Great Depression was 70-77 years ago.  Most people who lived through it are long dead and buried.  Memories faded.  The lessons learned then were eventually discarded, most particularly during the Presidencies of Clinton and Bush.

But of the two parties, the GOP drunk most deeply of this flawed ideology that unregulated free markets will provide for all. 

So unregulated free markets do what they do:  They go dramatically bust, plunging entire economies into recession or worse while evaporating the population’s savings. 

That ideological boat is sinking more rapidly than the economy.  And along with it sinks the GOP.