Pay no attention to the 4mpg truck behind the curtain

It's cute that Republican Congressmen want to bribe the electorate with $100 to erase 5 years of bad policy on energy. It's even cuter that they want to make little photo-ops in hydrogen fuel cell cars but can't even get to the end of the street before switching to an SUV:

Just minutes after giving a speech yesterday about the horrendously high gas prices that "average" Americans have to pay -- you know, all that B.S. about bribing voters to go GOP with $100 rebates...with ANWR drilling tacked on, of course -- Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert drove off in an energy-efficient hybrid.

But once he was around the corner and, theoretically, out of the sight of photographers, he screeched to a halt, got out, and jumped in his gas-guzzling SUV to finish the trip to the Capitol.

Here's the picture that should be a billboard in every district in the country:



It's like the hybrid was poison and every passing second sapped Denny's strength to take checks from the oil lobby.

We live in a photo-op world nowadays, and this was just a photo-op gone awry. But as a statement as to where the real priorities of the GOP are on energy policy, to see the Speaker of the House sneak into his gas guzzler when he thinks nobody's looking has powerful metaphorical value.