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Liberal commentator Keith Olbermann on Sunday suggested that the price of gas had been artificially manipulated since President Barack Obama took office to hurt his chances at re-election.

In an appearance on ABC, Olbermann noted he had become suspicious after gas prices increased from $1.61 a gallon when Obama took the oath of Office in January 2009 to nearly $4 a gallon earlier this month.

"The lowest gas prices in the last six years, the nadir of gas prices at the pump, was the day of this president's inauguration in 2009," Olbermann explained. "There has to be some connection between that being the least-busy political moment of a president's career -- when you're not going to hurt him and you're not going to harm him that way -- and the price of gas."

"There has to be an almost deliberate or at least a side-effect quality to that. There must be."

Last week, the president proposed measures that would give regulators more power to limit manipulation of the oil markets.

“We can’t afford a situation where some speculators can reap millions while millions of American families get the short end of the stick,” he told reporters.

But Republicans like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) quickly dismissed the proposal.

During a recent interview with the blog Shark Tank, Bachmann insisted that new legislation wasn’t necessary because Obama “already has the tools and he knows it.”

“This is just about waving a tar baby in the air and saying that something else is the problem. I have never seen a more irresponsible president who is infantile in the way that he continually blames everybody else for his failure to, first, diagnose the problem and, second, to address the problem. It’s always everyone else’s fault.”

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The Republican Party decided to bring out the author of the controversial Blunt Amendment, that thankfully was killed in the Senate last month, which would have allowed employers to deny coverage of health services to their employees on the basis of personal moral objections, to give their weekly address this Saturday.

Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt continued with the GOP's series of attacks on the Obama administration for the rising price of gas, of course conveniently omitting the fact that they soared to record heights after Republicans deregulated oil speculation back in 2008.

Blunt was also still flogging the Keystone pipeline project as some great "job creator" even though, as Media Matters' Political Correction noted, the numbers given by Republicans on the number of jobs created have been highly inflated and a lot of those jobs would be temporary or go to workers in other countries.

And like his buddy John Boehner over in the House, Blunt was calling the Buffett rule a "gimmick" because we all know that anything a Democrat proposes that might lower our deficit but doesn't fix the problem completely is a cheap trick, but when Republicans propose to go after the funding for Planned Parenthood, they're being completely serious about reducing the deficit and not just playing partisan politics.

Transcript of Blunt's remarks below the fold.

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked by CNN's Candy Crowley about whether or not their attempt to blame President Obama for rising gas prices was going to be successful, given recent polling showing that Americans primarily blamed the oil companies for the problem and the fact that Americans blamed the GOP by only three fewer percentage points than they did the president.

When McConnell responded by taking up for the oil companies and their subsidies, Crowley asked him if he thought those tax breaks were fair given their record profits and McConnell responded by accusing Crowley of "using all of the Democratic talking points" -- because that's generally what these guys do when they're trying to defend the indefensible. You go on the attack and accuse the interviewer of being biased.

Anyone who regularly watches Crowley's show on CNN knows full well whose talking points she's generally repeating, and they're not from the Democrats.

Transcript below the fold.

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It's so nice to see Republicans shilling for big oil and insisting that trying to move to other forms of energy is "ridiculous" but that's what we got from the head of the RNC, Reince Priebus, on Face the Nation this Sunday. And of course Priebus also trotted out the Republicans' "big lie" that Obama wants higher gas prices.

Elon Green over at Steve Benen's old blog, The Washington Monthly took that one on today after Mitt Romney repeated it on Fox News Sunday -- The Zombie Lie That Won't Die: Gas Prices Edition:

The claim that Obama consciously tried to hike the price of gas isn’t a new one. Last month, Mitch Daniels said the president “wanted higher gas prices, and he got them.” And earlier this month, a Fox News reporter was widely mocked, including by the president himself, for asking if Obama yearned for high has prices.

The Washington Post looked into the allegation (which, it’s worth noting, makes no sense whatsoever), and found that “the president never said he wanted the cost of gasoline to rise.”

What’s new, and immensely dispiriting, is that Romney — who, if nothing else, understands how the economy works — chose to pick up the mantle. The problem for him is he can’t very well acknowledge where the blame truly lies without eroding his support. If Romney calls out the oil speculators, he risks being labeled anti-capitalist, and if suggests ratcheting down the talk of attacking Iran, he will be labeled anti-Semitic.

The Washington Post also took on one of Priebus' other lies during this interview, which is that the building the Keystone pipeline will somehow lower the price of gas as well -- Will the Keystone XL pipeline lower gasoline prices?.

And Think Progress has more on Priebus' claim that the Keystone pipeline would create 20,000 jobs -- Myth That Keystone XL Creates Jobs Perpetuated By Oil Lobby, Parroted By Congress’s Oil Recipients:

Project advocates, who include Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, misrepresent its economic benefits to favor the oil industry, throwing out claims that Keystone XL creates “tens of thousands of jobs.”

However, studies conducted independently of TransCanada find much smaller jobs numbers, far from “tens of thousands.” An oil contractor hired by the State Department reported it would create between 5,000 and 6,000 temporary jobs, while an independent study by Cornell University found it would create only 500 to 1,400 temporary jobs. Once the costs of the increased pollution and risk of oil spills is factored in, Cornell found, the jobs impact is likely to be negative. The “118,000 spin-off jobs” number used by TransCanada received two Pinocchios from the Washington Post Fact Checker.

I'm also not sure how building a pipeline for Canadian oil which will end up on the world oil market would "get us a step closer to energy independence" but Schieffer let Priebus get away with that one as well. Schieffer for his part did at least challenge Priebus on the fact that Republicans were the ones that actually killed the pipeline by rushing the approval date, but after Priebus lied in response he didn't challenge him and just moved on to the next topic. But that's par for the course with these Sunday shows where Republicans are regularly allowed to lie with impunity and are seldom taken to task for it, with Schieffer being one of the worst offenders.

Transcript below the fold.

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While I agree with Haley Barbour that for the United States to have a real recovery from this recession, we're going to need to see better jobs numbers and economic growth than we're seeing now, he seems to be suffering from a bout of George W. Bush-amnesia with his arguments placing the blame entirely on the Obama administration for the jobs numbers not being better during this panel discussion segment on This Week.

Barbour harkened back to the Reagan administration to tout Republicans success at job creation, conveniently ignoring the fact that we were hemorrhaging around 700,000 jobs a month when Bush left office. He also seemed to forget that gas prices were actually higher under the Bush administration and that Bush didn't have any more success than the current administration in getting OPEC to open up their spigots. Barbour was also allowed to claim with no push back that more domestic drilling was going to lower gas prices or create jobs, which it won't as Paul Krugman pointed out this week.

Sadly, no one bothered to point out to Haley Barbour that for the first time, we have a political party in the United States doing everything they can to sabotage the economy on purpose rather than see President Obama be reelected and that they deserve a good deal of the blame for the economy not recovering quickly enough as well.

Transcript below the fold.

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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Sunday said that there was "no question" President Barack Obama had a plan to raise gas prices when he took office.

"When he ran for office, he said he wanted to see gas prices go up," the candidate told Fox News host Bret Baier. "He said that energy prices would skyrocket under his views. And he selected three people to help him implement that program: the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of the Interior, and the EPA administrator."

The former Massachusetts governor added that Obama needed to fire the "gas-hike trio" because he had "suffered an election-year conversion."

"Time for them to go probably hand in their resignations if he is really serious about that, and start drilling for energy here, whether that's our oil, our natural gas, take advantage of our coal resources for power generation," he said.

"These gasoline prices are hurting American families. And that pain and the result of the president's policies to turn down the Keystone pipeline from Canada, and at the same time, put $500 million into Solyndra. These policies are not working. His policies are hurting the American people. And they want to have someone who will finally take advantage of our energy resources and I will."

During a speech at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland last week, the president said that the U.S. should pursue an “all-of-the-above strategy” for developing new energy sources, including renewable energies like solar, wind and biofuels.

“Here’s the sad thing,” Obama explained to the friendly crowd. “Lately we’ve heard a lot of professional politicians — a lot of the folks who are running for a certain office, who shall go unnamed — they’ve been talking down new sources of energy. They dismiss wind power. They dismiss solar power. They make jokes about biofuels. They were against raising fuel standards. I guess they like gas guzzlers. They think that’s good for our future.”

“We’ve heard this kind of thinking before,” he added. “If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail — they must have been founding members of the Flat-Earth Society. They would not have believed that the world was round.”

At a recent event in northeastern Ohio, Romney dismissed renewable energy, declaring that “you can’t drive a car with a windmill on it.”

Obama's campaign has accused Romney of raising taxes on gasoline by 2.5 cents per gallon while serving as governor of Massachusetts.

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After Newt Gingrich's extremely long, lie packed speech on Super Tuesday the panel covering election night at MSNBC actually did some fact checking on one of Gingrich's lies, that President Obama said he only cares about gas prices because it will harm his chances of being reelected.

Newt Makes False Claim About Obama On Gas Prices:

Speaking at his victory party Tuesday night after winning his home state of Georgia, Newt Gingrich falsely claimed President Obama was "worried about higher gas prices because it will make it harder for [him] to get re-elected."

Here's Newt's full comment:

The president was right the other day. He's so nervous about gasoline prices and energy, that he's done two major speeches. I thought today, in one of the most shallow and self-serving comments by a president I've heard in a long time, he was candid in his press conference. He said, you know, I'm really worried about higher gas prices because it will make it harder for me to get re-elected. I did not make this up. It was just nice to know that the president once again has managed to take the pain of the american people and turn it into his own personal problem.

But President Obama didn't say that.

Here's what he really said at today's White House press briefing, directed at Fox News reporter Ed Henry, who asked the president if he actually wants gas prices to go even higher so he can "wean" the American people off fossil fuels.

Ed, just from a political perspective, do you think the President of the United States, going into reelection, wants gas prices to go up even higher? … Is there anybody here who thinks that makes a lot of sense?

Karoli posted President Obama and Ed Henry's little exchange from earlier here -- Fox News' Ed Henry Smacked Down By President Obama During Presidential News Conference.

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Ed Henry and Fox News were made for each other. Here's a clip from today's presidential news conference where Ed asks a predictably stupid question, which President Obama is happy to use to smack him around verbally a little bit.

Actually, Ed's question was two separate ones, but the framing was classic Fox News.

HENRY: Followup on Israel and Iran because you have said repeatedly you have Israel's back. So I wonder why three years in office you have not visited Israel as President. And related to Iran and Israel, you have been concerned about this loose talk of war as you call it driving up gas prices further. Your critics will say on Capitol Hill that you want gas prices to go higher because you have said before that would wean the American people off fossil fuels to renewable fuels. How do you respond to that?

Yes Ed, let's not mention that those nameless critics include every single opinionator on Fox News, and those same opinionators are all completely hawkish on war with Iran in the name of "defending Israel." But catch the President's smile during the second question. He was ready, and here's his answer:

OBAMA: Ed, just from a political perspective, do you think the President of the United States going into a re-election campaign wants gas prices to go up higher?

Henry's doe-eyed, innocent look back at the President while saying "I'm just asking" was hysterical. No, Ed Henry wasn't trying to set up a Fox News meme, he was "just asking," doncha know? So President Obama put it to the rest of them in the room.

OBAMA: Does anybody here think that makes a lot of sense? Look. Here's the bottom line with respect to gas prices. I want gas prices lower because they hurt families, because I meet folks every day who have to drive a long way to get to work and them filling up this gas tank gets more and more painful and it's a tax out of their pocketbooks, out of their paychecks. And a lot of folks are already operating on the margins right now. And it's not good for the overall economy because when gas prices go up, consumer spending oftentimes pulls back. And we're in the midst right now of a recovery that is starting to build up steam and we don't want to reverse it.

He went on to talk about the fact that there's no magic silver bullet to the gas price problem, and that a long-term strategy of moving to other types of fuel is the real answer to solving the problem, but stressed that it's not an overnight solution. He also reminded listeners that this is an annual occurrence that won't change until we change our dependence on oil.

President Obama: 1 Fox News: 0

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During this week's Republican response to President Obama's Weekly Address, we got more of the same with their solutions on energy and gas prices, which is "drill baby drill", pretending that the Keystone XL pipeline is going to create tons of jobs, and pretending that they're for an "all of the above" energy policy when they've been completely dismissive of President Obama for pushing a move to new sources of energy like solar, wind and geothermal.

Hastings also completely ignored the fact that domestic oil production is up in the United States and it hasn't lowered gas prices, that it's a global market that President Obama doesn't have a lot of control over if they're unfairly going to try to blame him for the costs of gas rising and that oil speculation has a good deal to do with the price of gasoline going up which his party doesn't seem to be too interested in confronting since they don't want any regulation of Wall Street or anyone else for that matter. Let the 'free market" rule.

Hastings was also still pushing the GOP's old "jobs plan" which Jon Perr already took apart for us here at C&L, not to be confused with their "new" jobs plan which he also debunked for us as well.

Transcript of Hasting's remarks and their description of the video from their You Tube posting below the fold.

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Conservative columnist George Will says it's "economic nonsense" for tea party favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL) to blame President Barack Obama for the high cost of putting gas in his Hummer.

Writing on his Facebook page last week, West charged that Obama's energy policy was "insidious political gimmickry."

"Here is the bottom line, last night it took 70 dollars to fill the tank of my 2008 H3 Hummer, what is it costing you?" he asked.

Politico noted that the 8-cylinder 2008 H3 Hummer only gets an average of 15.5 miles per gallon.

On Sunday, ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked Will if the eventual Republican presidential nominee could overcome conservative overreach on social issues like the proposed Virginia bill that would have forced women seeking abortions to have invasive ultrasounds.

"Right now they think they're going to float in on high gas prices," Will explained. "It's just preposterous."

"It is preposterous," former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) agreed. "Blaming the president for high gas prices is like blaming [former New York City Mayor] Rudy Giuliani for 9/11. It's totally ridiculous."

"Allen West from south Florida, a Republican, said he was outraged this week because it cost him $70 to fill his car," Will pointed out. "He drives a Hummer. Newt Gingrich said the American people have a right to demand $2.50 gas. They have a right to demand to lobsters grow on trees. I mean, this is economic nonsense."

(H/T: Think Progress)