And about time, too! Mitt Romney told the audience at a fundraiser today that he plans to unveil his comprehensive energy platform on Thursday of this week, and you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be watching for it. As I’ve argued about a million times, there are fewer surefire methods of both boosting economic growth and government revenue, while simultaneously creating productive private-sector jobs and increasing our energy security, than ending our self-destructive quest to forcibly redesign the energy economy of the future.

Our self-destructive refusal to simply allow American entrepreneurship and ingenuity to tap into our own abundant energy resources, and meanwhile pour money we don’t have into energy technologies that fail the test of the market, while global demand soars is about as backwards a policy as it gets. I’d wager the issue will get even more potent if/when gas prices continue to rise, and a concrete pro-traditional (or at least not anti-traditional) energy platform compared to President Obama’s highly limiting approach could make a difference in swingier states like Ohio or Pennsylvania — and I am for it. The Hill reports:

“We will be, I believe before the end of this week, in New Mexico describing a comprehensive energy plan, particularly as it relates to fossil-based fuels,” [Romney] said. …

President Obama has been taking aim at Romney’s opposition to extending tax credits that help finance wind energy projects, while Romney used an Ohio campaign stop last week to allege Obama is hostile to coal and oil-and-gas. …

[Romney] has vowed to approve the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline, and seek a major expansion of oil-and-gas leasing on federal lands and waters — including Pacific and Atlantic Coast waters that remain off-limits under Obama.

President Obama’s major energy-related of pushes have revolved largely around extending tax credits for the wind-energy industry (upon which the industry is dependent for its survival, hence why the wind lobby is fighting tooth-and-nail to keep them around), especially in the wind-friendly states of Colorado and Iowa. Romney, however, has said he’ll end the convoluted gamut of green-energy subsidies stemming from the Obama administration, and thank goodness — enough with the quixotic regulations and “necessarily skyrocketing” energy prices that limit our opportunities, kill wealth, and harm small businesses. Out with the old (crony capitalism and central planning in defense of political clean-energy romanticizing) and in with the new (allowing the many efficiencies and innovations borne of the free market to work sans federal meddling), amiright?