SILLY OBAMA! HE THINKS WE CAN COMPETE WITH THE CHINESE BY DEVELOPING THE SAME TECHNOLOGY!

I see from Steve Benen that Republicans are offering punch lines as a substitute for governance once again:

President Obama spoke in Miami last week about energy policy.... Towards the end of the speech, he mentioned, "We're making new investments in the development of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel that's actually made from a plant-like substance -- algae."

And ... Republicans have decided to ignore the other 3,000 words Obama said about energy policy, and focus exclusively on the one word they found amusing....

In his speech on the Senate floor, [Mitch] McConnell made it seem as if the very notion of biofuel was outlandish to the point of absurdity.

It appears to be part of a coordinated assault -- McConnell's nonsense coincided perfectly with a push from Charles Krauthammer, Rush Limbaugh, and others.

Now, stop me if you can tell where this is going: As Steve points out, Republicans were for algae as a fuel before they were against it.

I'll leave you to click on the links if you want the details, but my favorite part of the coordinated winger assault was this tweet, in which Tammy Bruce attacked the president using her special pet name for him:

Yes, heaven forbid we should try to compete with the very country right-wingers say is kicking our ass economically by pursuing technologies China is pursuing: solar power, batteries ... and algae, for that matter. You see, China is also developing this as a potential source of fuel. A few sample headlines:

ENN of China Converts Algae to Biofuel

Accelergy Partners with Yankuang for Algae Farm at Coal-to-Liquids Plant in China

Algae.Tec in a JV with Chinese Company for the First Algae Biofuels Facility in China

China Conducts Its First Jet Biofuel Trial

Apparently pursuing this (and the other technologies Bruce lists) is pie-in-the-sky silliness if we do it, even though it somehow isn't when our main industrial competitor does it.