Many campaigns hold “house parties,” where volunteers invite friends and neighbors over in support of a candidate.

House parties are usually about SUPPORTING a candidate running for office. But for Bruce Lunsford, even the house parties are negative. In an email dispatched yesterday, Lunsford says his supporters can “help defeat Mitch McConnell by hosting a house party.”

Herald-Leader reporter Ryan Alessi wrote about this very trend in the Lunsford campaign, finding that the feeling amongst Democrats is more anti-McConnell than pro-Lunsford.

Does anyone actually support Bruce Lunsford on his own merits? Or is his campaign all about attacking the other guy?

In the meantime, we are waiting on partisan Democrats to put out those thousands of negative yard signs unveiled at Fancy Farm. Maybe they can’t find anyone to put up signs that are pro-Lunsford.

In making their case against expanding energy exploration offshore, Bruce Lunsford and Barack Obama frequently claim that we don’t have enough oil reserves in the U.S. to make a difference. What they don’t tell you is that we really don’t know the exact quantity of our reserves, and if Barack Obama has his way we’ll never know.  Obama has introduced a bill that would make it even more difficult to estimate offshore oil reserves.

From columnist Deroy Murdock:

Federal officials currently employ estimates based primarily on two-dimensional maps that oil-industry surveyors produced in the 1970s and furnished to the Interior Department. Since 1981, Congressional appropriations amendments effectively have barred Interior from financing or permitting survey expeditions.

…Obama's "Oil SENSE Act" would repeal the 2005 Energy Policy Act's authorization of these inventories. S.115 would leave decision makers with Carter administration maps drawn with pre-PC technology. This is like engineering a Space Shuttle mission with slide rules.

Obama's bill would prohibit expanded use of 3-D seismic techniques that locate and measure underwater oil deposits. In October 1999, President Clinton's Energy Department evaluated the environmental quality of 1970s' 2-D equipment against last decade's 3-D technology. With the latter, Energy concluded, "Overall impacts of exploration and production are reduced because fewer wells are required to develop the same amount of reserves." In 1970, 17 percent of offshore wells struck oil. By 1997, that figure was 48 percent.

Contemporary 4-D surveying adds the dimension of time. Satellites help find and quantify sub sea deposits, track their flows, and predict their next steps. Some 70 percent of 4-D wells hit oil.

Obama's Don't Ask, Don't Drill policy spurns these marvels and embraces outdated information gathered with obsolete instruments. This is the audacity of ignorance.

Adults should not make decisions in willful oblivion. Democrats like Obama prefer not to know what riches rest off America's coasts. They resemble kindergartners who cover their ears and hum loudly to muffle their parents' unwelcome words.

Meanwhile, Americans struggle to fuel planes, trains, and automobiles. Despite this national nightmare, congressional Democrats fled on a five-week summer vacation, rather than vote on Republican amendments to extend offshore drilling. Democrats chose suntan oil over oil production.

… Across the Capitol, as Human Events' Jed Babbin observed, Senate Democrats favored doubling gasoline prices to considering further fuel development. Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, asked to debate pro-energy legislation. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., representing majority Democrats, objected. And if gasoline reached $5 per gallon? Salazar said no. $7.50? McConnell wondered. Salazar: Not yet. McConnell continued, "I would renew my request with the modification that the trigger be $10 a gallon at the pump." Salazar replied: "I object." …