The Politico is reporting that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is taking the heat for high gas prices, and it is all part of the plan. She is telling Democrats who face a tough fight for re-election to tell their constituents that they will back drilling for oil, but to not really mean it. As the Democrats see it, they will own Washington come November, and it won’t matter then. They can do what they want:

California Democrat Nancy Pelosi may be trying to save the planet — but the rank and file in her party increasingly are just trying to save their political hides when it comes to gas prices as Republicans apply more and more rhetorical muscle.

But what looks like intraparty tension on the surface is part of an intentional strategy in which Pelosi takes the heat on energy policy, while behind the scenes she’s encouraging vulnerable Democrats to express their independence if it helps them politically, according to Democratic aides on and off Capitol Hill.

Pelosi’s gambit rests on one big assumption: that Democrats will own Washington after the election and will be able to craft a sweeping energy policy that is heavy on conservation and fuel alternatives while allowing for some new oil drilling.

The House Committee on Natural Resources, Rep. Nick J. Rahall (D-W.Va.), doesn’t even see a bill for drilling coming to the floor. There’s no reason for it:

Asked if Congress will produce a comprehensive energy bill in September before Congress adjourns again for elections, Rahall replied, “This year? No.”

Instead, the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources believes Democrats are all about 2009.

“We’ve laid the groundwork this year,” Rahall said.

This is not the first time voters have been promised one thing by Congressional Democrats when they either didn’t plan on delivering, or knew they couldn’t. Remember the video of Rep. Paul Kanjorski telling his constituents:

“I’ll tell you my impression. We really in this last election, when I say we…the democrats, I think pushed it as far as we can to the end of the fleet, didn’t say it, but we implied it. That if we won the Congressional elections, we could stop the war. Now anybody was a good student of Government would know that wasn’t true. But you know, the temptation to want to win back the Congress, we sort of stretched the facts…and people ate it up.”

Now they are using the same strategy, only replace “stop the war” with “drill for oil.” They’ll tell people that, stretch the facts a bit, and people will eat it up.