I try to keep a flexible mind, and parse out the various plans we might have, and their implications.

There is certainly a "free market plan" at one extreme, but there are several reasons we don't have one, and won't ever have one under a Republican or Democratic administration.

Writ large: people want low gas prices.

A free market is happy with any price.  As we all know, a free market just connects buyers and sellers, finding a spot of agreement between the two.

I'm probably not being as clear as I should (on my first cup of coffee), but the big missing element of any honest "free market" plan is that it does not come with any price guarantee.  It should come with a disclaimer: "you are on your own, scope out what energy prices will be in the next few years, and make your consumer decisions (cars, houses, appliances, commutes) accordingly.

I'm really afraid that what we are getting is free market (in the background) but with a veneer of (phony) commitments that we'll have low gasoline prices, or that pollution-free hydrogen cars will save us.

I'm afraid the government, with their phony commitments to future solutions, only enables and supports bad consumer decisions by the bulk of the population today.

They think there is a plan to save them.

I suppose some even have enough cognitive dissonance to think there is a plan, and a free market, to save them.