Last week on Fox News, while chatting with Mitt Romney about President Obama's citations of increased domestic oil production, Sean Hannity retorted, "He's claiming we've never produced more oil, but that is on private land."
Similarly, on ABC's This Week this Sunday, former RNC Chair Haley Barbour said: "The explosion in production of oil and gas in the United States, is on private lands, paid for by private capital without one dime being contributed toward horizontal drilling or hydraulic fracturing by the government."
And your point is?
These are the same people who have routinely argue that President Obama is currently destroying the private sector with rules and regulations, and fears of more rules and regulations because of mean looks at job-creating CEOs.
For example, last year Fox News' Dick Morris predicted that "oil production next year and the year after and the year after is going to collapse because Obama has literally zeroed out new oil exploration and drilling permits in the United States."
That is now proven to be literally wrong.
After President Obama's efforts to improve oil drilling safety in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster have NOT stopped the private sector from increasing oil production, leading Republicans -- who routinely insist that Obama is annihilating the private sector -- now want to pretend that private sector production is irrelevant to assessing President Obama's energy record.
Come back goal posts, come back!