Looks like the Republicans have finally found their voice in this election cycle. They have found their one simple, uniting, easily digestible, and patently false issue to pound into the voters' heads over and over again until it becomes the "truth" (you know, like the "truth" that Republicans are better for the economy and the troops?). This year they are banking on Offshore Drilling.

Take this recent attack ad from the McCain campaign on how it is Obama's fault that we are paying so much for gas. This is one of those classic "red meat" electoral issues, not unlike gay marriage or handgun control, which is meant to target all uninformed voters and get them fired up; to divide us on an argument based on false pretenses; and to pretend as a party to offer a real solution to real Americans problems. The only real problem here is that offshore drilling is not a solution.

Here are some facts about offshore drilling, taken from analysis performed by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the independent statistical and analytical agency within the U.S. Department of Energy:

• The oil companies already have access to some 34 billion barrels of offshore oil they haven’t even developed yet, but ending the federal moratorium on offshore drilling would probably add only another 8 billion barrels.
  
• Since Bush was elected the oil companies have made a $600 billion profit which they used to increase dividends instead of investing in exploration.
  
• Opening up the outer continental shelf in the Pacific, Atlantic and eastern Gulf regions would result in production no sooner than 2017, and would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil production before 2030.
  
• ANWR would add only 1 to 2 percent to the overall world oil supply. The drilling there would subtract anywhere from 41 cents to $1.44 per barrel of crude oil around 2025. That translates to a savings of just a couple pennies per gallon at the pump.
  
• If we raised average fuel efficiency to 40 MPG by 2030; this would save us more than 5 million barrels of oil per day. (This amounts to 25 times as much as we would get from Senator McCain's offshore drilling.)
  

Here is one more truth for you. Before June of this year, Sen. McCain was consistently against drilling in protected areas offshore and on land. This stance only netted him around $200,000 a month from the oil industry in the form of campaign contributions. Last month, after his reversal of stance (a.k.a. flip-flop), he was able to net $1.1 million from them. (source) Yeah, exactly.