Barack Obama is given to calling the GOP a party captive of hateful special interests.

It takes a lot of what my Jewish friends call “chutzpah” to suggest that unnamed special interests control the Republican Party when his own party is totally captive to the most wealthy and powerful special interests in the nation.

Obama and the national Democratic Party is owned lock, stock and barrel by the teachers' unions, the bosses of big labor, cash-heavy, tree-hugging environmental groups, and Planned Parenthood and its allies in the sleazy abortion industry.

And boy, do Obama and his fellow Democrats dance to their tunes! When they say “waltz,” in a second he's out there on the political stage whirling obediently to their three-step beat.

In February 2008, Obama spoke to reporters from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel saying, “Let's see if this (school voucher) experiment works, and then if it does, whatever my preconception, you do what's best for kids.”

He danced a different waltz on Saturday, July 12, when he told the American Federation of Teachers (which, with the National Education Association, owns the Democratic Party) that like them he was opposed to vouchers, and when his campaign was asked about his newest stand on the issue, it released a statement saying, “Senator Obama has always been a critic of vouchers.”

Oh?

Said Catholic League president Bill Donohue: “Guess Obama couldn't resist pandering to the teachers union. It's so easy to tell the media that keeping an open mind on school vouchers is the best way to go. But when cash counts - and the American Federation of Teachers has plenty of it - who cares about principle? Fact is, no amount of empirical evidence was ever going to change his mind.”

Then there's the matter of the current crisis in oil prices. One patently obvious answer to the problem of relaxing our dependence on foreign oil supplies is to exploit the massive oceans of oil waiting patiently to be found here at home and in the waters offshore, and in Alaska.

It's just plain common sense that when you have enough oil beneath the surface in your own backyard to meet your needs just about forever you should start getting hold of it and stop paying tens of billions to foreign nations who have us by the short hairs. Any five-year-old with enough sense to come in out of the rain would understand that given the vast supplies of oil available to us here at home it is just plain idiocy to keep ourselves utterly reliant on foreign sources of the stuff.

Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats don't see it that way. They're not allowed to. Their elitist lords and masters in the environmental movement won't permit it, and should they defy the tree huggers they'd lose all those lovely dollars the greenies keep shoveling into their coffers and those of their candidates running for re-election to Congress.

So they fall back on the old canard that even if we started drilling here it would take years for the United States to see any results, ignoring the fact that by telling all those Arab potentates and the Marxist dictator in Venezuela that the gravy train is going to come to a grinding halt in the near future, we're warning them that if they don't increase supply now we'll stop buying from them as soon as we can.

Republicans are demanding that the Democrat-controlled Congress approve drilling here at home now. The environmentalist lobby - which hates automobiles and fossil fuels almost as much as they hate people - owns Barack Obama and his Democratic Party, and they say “no drilling.” Barack Obama and the Democratic Party obey.

Then there's big labor, which is running short on members whose compulsory dues they use to finance Democratic candidates. They want an end to secret balloting in certain labor elections, and Obama bends his knee and pledges to do big labor's bidding, and to heck with workers' rights.

Then there's the abortion industry. When they say killing the unborn is just dandy, Obama agrees. And the big bucks from the multi-billion dollar baby-killing industry flow into his coffers.

He knows who his bosses are.

Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late

President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. E-mail

comments to reagan@caglecartoons.com