Mike Padgett says Senator Alexander is engaging in election-year grandstanding about gas prices:

"In five years as a United States senator, he has done nothing that would prevent the pain we’re feeling now at the pump," Padgett said after Senator Alexander announced that he would propose a "Manhattan Project-style" effort to break U.S. energy dependence on foreign producers.

"This is nothing more than an election-year re-invention for Senator Alexander.

"When Democrats put a strong energy bill on the table last year, he made a lot of noise about how he was for its 35 mpg requirement, then he stepped right in line with the White House and threatened to stop the bill in its tracks if it ended tax breaks to Big Oil.

"And if he is really a champion of clean energy, why has he led the charge against wind energy? Meanwhile, he is a big fan of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"Tennessee voters are too smart to be fooled by this pandering. I ask them to stand with me, and when it comes time to vote on energy legislation, I will stand with them, not the oil industry."

Mike Padgett is exactly right about Alexander's election year pandering.

But Padgett's thoughts on energy policy at his website are a little short-sighted, being focused mainly on the price of gas (which is already artificially low) and helping out Tennessee's farmers by replacing oil with biofuel from corn and soybeans and switchgrass.

We used to feed grains to our horses. Feeding them to our cars is a step back 100 years into the past. Switchgrass is marginally better. But we need to get beyond internal combustion and burning up our natural resources (including topsoil) and competing with our cars for food.

But at least Padgett has thoughts. Bob Tuke does not address energy policy at all on his website.

Democrats are going to have to bring their A game to compete with the GOP machine against Lamar Alexander.

That said, either Democrat will improve by an order of magnitude our current Tennessee Senate delegation, and help give us a fighting chance to start undoing eight years of catastrophic Bush/GOP/Big Oil energy policy.