Reuters AS Republican presidential candidates toss barbs at Barack Obama over expensive gasoline, the US president and his team are going on the offensive with a strategy to divert blame and prepare voters for higher costs. In subtle and not so subtle ways, Obama, a Democrat, is raising the issue of high prices to promote his own policy priorities and blunt criticism from the men vying to unseat him in the Nov. 6 election. His strategy is both politically- and policy-oriented. The president wants to advance his plans to increase renewable energy sources and reduce US reliance on foreign oil. But he also needs to win the war of words to gain an upper hand over Republicans in Western battleground states such as Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, where people drive a lot and feel the sting of rising prices acutely. Republicans see many weaknesses to exploit. They blame Obama for not doing enough to increase domestic production of fossil fuels and cite his decision to block a new oil pipeline from Canada as evidence that he is beholden to environmentalists. Rising gasoline costs have brought the issue to the forefront of the presidential campaign. So Obama has started to pepper his speeches with references to prices at the pump. On Tuesday he cited the extension of the payroll tax cut as a welcome buffer for workers coping with the cost of gas. On Wednesday he proposed — not for the first time — getting rid of tax loopholes that benefit oil and gas companies. On Thursday he'll go a step further, using a speech in Florida to outline his own accomplishments in the energy arena along with a long-term strategy to keep fuel prices down. “This is a recurrent problem and it's a problem that reinforces the need that (Obama) identified back when he was a candidate for a comprehensive energy strategy,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said. Obama advisers have pointed to growing demand in China and unrest in the Middle East as factors out of their control that are affecting the price of oil. High gasoline prices hurt Obama politically as much as they hurt the country economically, and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum seized on them criticize the president for his environmental record. “Folks are just starting to be able to breathe a little as the economy starts to come back a little bit, unemployment starts to go down,” Santorum said at a campaign event last week. “All of a sudden they are going to be hit with the same force of wind that hit us in 2008 in the summer that caused us to go into a recession. All because of the radical environmentalist policies of this president.” Carney dismissed Santorum's comments as “random statements by politicians seeking office.” Obama is the first president to preside over growth in domestic oil production since President Jimmy Carter, also a Democrat. Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, promised at a debate with rivals on Wednesday night that the country would enjoy lower gasoline prices if he won the White House. __
