Fair warning – if you don’t want to read about some biased
opinions, go on to the next post. A few political blogs this week (I’ll cautiously characterize them as “conservative”,
even though that’ll cause no small amount of nitpicking in the Comments section) decided to pick up the interrelated
topics of fuel consumption, safety, driving habits, practicality, and the War on Terrorism. Andrew Sullivan seems to
have kicked things off with
his
anti-SUV rant, and later
calls
for a bumper-sticker contest. An early contender, “How many soldiers-per-gallon does your SUV get”, might be
characterized as inflammatory by some people.
Tom Maguire picks up on the topic
at JustOneMinute, suggesting that indeed the true cost of oil isn?t necessarily paid at the pump, and showing a bit of
frustration with the new CAFE regulations that exempt vehicles with a GVWR of over 8,500 pounds. On the issue of
driving SUVs for safety reasons, Maguire links over to Andrew Samwick at Vox Baby, who takes up
the odd (for a libertarian) position that SUV
drivers should have to be specially licensed, since they present a potentially greater risk to other drivers. I
personally think that he makes an excellent point, since the whole idea of wrapping one?s self in a few tons of
unwieldy iron has never appealed to me from a humanitarian standpoint (that?s why I might not make for a good Randian
objectivist). Samwick later goes as far as suggesting
that the CAFE regulations be scrapped
entirely in favor of increased gas taxes, which he thinks would do a better job of discouraging fuel consumption.
MaxSpeak, on the other side of the politcal spectrum, agrees
with this idea.
Finally, the whole shindig ends up at Glenn Reynold?s Instapundit blog, where he covers all of the above political
aspects and then finally talks about cars. It seems that Glenn
is getting ready to replace his Passat wagon, and is unsure what to get next (the Instapundit also
owns an RX-8). He?s interested in a new TDI Passat wagon if
it?s actually available, and pines for a wagon version of the Honda Accord hybrid (heck, it?d be nice if we could just
get the regular Accord wagon in the US). He?d probably go ga-ga over
the TDI/DSG combo offered in European Passats.