Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/30005
6B – Daily News – Monday, April 25, 2011 Costly gasoline clouds Obama re-election prospects ring frustration. WASHINGTON (AP) — With gas prices climbing and little relief in sight, President Barack Obama is scrambling to get ahead of the latest potential obstacle to his re-election bid, even as Republicans are making plans to exploit the issue. No one seems more aware of the electoral peril than Obama himself. “My poll numbers go up and down depending on the latest crisis, and right now gas prices are weighing heavily on people,” he told Democratic donors in Los Angeles this past week. In fact, Obama raised the issue unsolicited in a series of town meet- ings in Virginia, California and Neva- da that were ostensibly about his deficit-reduction plan. And he made the gas spike the subject of his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. “It’s just another burden when things were already pretty tough,” he said. As Obama well knows, Americans love their cars and remain heavily dependent on them, and they don’t “These gas prices are killing you right now,” Obama said at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, acknowl- edging that many Americans can’t afford new fuel-efficient cars and must drive older models.. For some, he said, the cost of a fill-up has all but erased the benefit of the payroll tax holiday that he and congressional Republicans agreed on last December. On Saturday, Obama insisted in his radio and Internet address that the best answer is a long-term drive to develop alternatives to fossil fuel. He also renewed calls to end $4 billion in sub- sidies for oil and gas companies. “Instead of subsidizing yesterday’s energy sources,” he said, “we need to invest in tomorrow’s.” hesitate to punish politicians when the cost of filling their tanks goes through the roof. Indeed, for presidents, responding to sudden surges is a recur- Republicans contend that high gas prices are the inevitable result of an administration they accuse of stifling domestic drilling, and which placed new curbs on offshore exploration after last spring’s disastrous BP oil spill.