Leadership Quote by Mac Thornberry

A Republican congressman from oil-and-gas country, Thornberry knows the safest way to talk about energy is to sound like he is not taking sides. The line is built to reassure everyone at once: innovation-minded voters hear "new forms of energy", incumbents in fossil fuel hear "more efficient use of existing energy sources". It is a political two-fer that treats the energy transition less as a moral rupture than as a continuity plan.

The specific intent is policy-moderate and coalition-minded. "We must continue" frames research as noncontroversial maintenance, not a radical pivot. "Research" is doing heavy rhetorical labor: it signals seriousness and futurity while avoiding binding commitments on regulation, mandates, or timelines. You can back laboratories without angering donors; you can praise efficiency without confronting consumption. Even the phrasing "existing energy sources" politely sidesteps naming coal, oil, and gas, smoothing the cultural conflict embedded in those words.

The subtext is an argument for American competitiveness and strategic stability, a familiar Thornberry register shaped by defense politics. Energy is cast as infrastructure for national power: invest, modernize, hedge. That matters in the post-2000s context of price shocks, wars in oil regions, and a climate debate that turned tribal. This kind of sentence is less about vision than about governing the seams between constituencies. It offers permission to move forward without admitting anyone needs to lose, which is precisely why it works - and why it can feel evasive to people demanding a clearer break.