Obama On Energy Policy, Gas Prices: GOP 'Stuck in the Past'

President Barack Obama responded to attacks made by Republicans about his energy policy, arguing that the GOP strategy to lower gas prices was ignoring the facts.

In a speech Thursday morning that exuded charisma, the president made the case for alternative sources of energy and painted the Republican Party as a group with unrealistic expectations and looks backwards, not forward.

A lot of folks running for a certain office, who shall go unnamed, they've been talking down new sources of energy, the president said to a receptive crowd at Prince George's Community College in Largo, Md.

They dismiss wind power, they dismiss solar power, they make jokes about biofuels... I guess they like gas guzzling cars better ... they are stuck in the past, he said. 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 the Earth was round.

He also blasted Republicans for an unplausible strategy that only relies on drilling, explaining that America would only have 2 percent of the oil it needed if it only drilled at home.

You don't need to be getting an excellent education at Prince George Community College to know that we've got a math problem here, he said, also assuring that we're drilling all over this country.

There are a few spots we're not drilling. We're not drilling in the national mall. We're not drilling at your house, Obama joked.

President Obama has been under fire by his GOP rivals for his energy policy, especially since an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that Americans were increasingly worried about increasing gas prices. The cost at the pump has increased 49-cents a gallon to an average of $3.79 so far this year.

In his speech, Obama said that rising gas costs were out of his control-due to instability in the Middle East -- and blasted Republican candidates who promised to lower prices at the pump if they make it into the White House.

Why not $2.40? Why not $2.10? Obama said, mocking Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's campaign promise to reduce the price of gas to $2.50 if elected. Obama said such statements were just cute bumper sticker lines.

GOP Says Obama To Blame For High Gas Prices

The Republican National Committee has criticized Obama for side-stepping blame on rising gas prices and failing to deliver on 2008 promises he made about energy independence, wasting millions of dollars on failed investments like with energy firm Solyndra.

Americans are frustrated with the rhetoric and lack of results from this president. Another speech proclaiming there isn't a silver bullet to deal with gas prices is not doing anything to solve the problem of soaring prices at the pump, said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus in a statement.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has had some of the harshest rhetoric of all of Obama's critics. He recently blasted the president's energy stratgey, calling him and his advisers radical environmentalists.

We need someone who didn't buy into that environmental hoax of man-made global warming, Santorum said earlier this week in Mississippi, according to the Miami Herald. I opposed any cap-and-trade, unlike other people in this race who sat on couches with (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) or crowed when they were governor of Massachusetts about imposing the first carbon tax. And warning against the dangers of carbon dioxide, calling it a toxin. Tell that to a plant.

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