The McCain team is piling on over Barack Obama’s comments that he would have preferred that gas taxes go up more gradually. I get that Obama’s comments sound a bit out-of-touch, dare I say insensitive, but I think everyone is protesting too much. High gas prices are, conservatives tell us, a function of the marketplace (and of the chokehold by OPEC abetting by our inane failure to develop domestic oil sources). When the market functions as it should and gas gets too expensive, consumers will conserve and producers will develop alternative sources that become cost effective in relative terms. And what exactly would be the alternative to high gas prices now (other than the gas tax holiday and some other stop-gap measures)? We should go harass and tax the energy companies some more? (I never understood how a windfall oil tax helps consumers, but it’s always on the list of Democratic “solutions” to energy issues.)

Obama probably could have phrased it differently. But isn’t the current price spike the greatest non-regulatory impetus to developing alternative energy sources we’ve seen so far? Sure beats carbon taxes and complicated cap and trade systems. (And it is a pretty darn good argument to increase domestic drilling.)