If a policy reform is going to come out of British Petroleum’s catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, we predict it will emerge in the outlines of Sarah Palin’s post Wednesday on her Facebook page. That is where she sends what she calls a “message to exreme ‘environmentalists’ who hypocritically protest domestic energy production offshore and onshore.” Writes she: “Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country’s energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It’s catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proves it.”

The former governor’s statement is being met with much ridicule among those who are agitating for, say, President Obama to show more emotion. The line against her is that her mantra of “Drill, Baby, Drill” was meant to refer to just such deep water drilling as British Petroleum was doing at a depth of a mile in the Gulf of Mexico. But her famous chant was in fact a call for tapping our own oil petroleum reserves, particularly in Alaska, though not only there. She favors drilling both offshore and on-. Her policy is centered in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the her state’s other great oil and gas fields, such as the National Petroleum Reserve on the North Slope of Alaska.

Governor Palin’s point will, we predict, become only more logical in the face of the disaster of the Deepwater Horizon. And she will increasingly come to be seen as having a clear way of thinking. She thinks like an economist. She understands that policies have consequences. If one wants, as the environmentalists have been doing for a decade, to restrict onshore drilling, it is going to incent offshore drilling. Her point: “We need permission to drill in safer areas.” Her warning is that “radical environmentalists” are “damaging the planet” with their efforts “to lock up safer drilling areas.” Her message to the extremists: “Americans are on to you.” No wonder the left is frightened of her — she’s a politician with a sharp and clear mind.Sarah Palin’s Way of Thinking