Seizing on record-high gas prices averaging more than $4 a gallon, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska and other Republicans this week made their most coordinated attack yet on President Obama’s energy policy, saying he should immediately allow drilling in Alaska.

“Where’s the president?” Ms. Palin, the likely Republican presidential nominee, asked about three million people on her Facebook page. “Barack Obama has no plan, doesn’t address it, doesn’t seem to care that every American family is paying more to go to work, for the products that they get, to be able to get to school, to be able to do all the things Americans do in the course of a summer.”

In Washington, several Tea Party representatives went further, calling on Mr. Obama to end his moratorium on drilling in the Gulf, remove the regulations that require completely reformulating the gasoline supply every summer, and cut the red tape that stops companies from drilling in existing oilfields in Alaska.

The White House quickly rejected drilling for more oil, saying it has been common knowledge for over a decade that it takes ten years for new drilling to begin supplying oil to the economy.

Gas prices are a pocketbook issue, and polls show they are a concern across the country. More than half of those responding to one April survey said the surge had caused a financial hardship on their families, while a March study found that the majority of respondents thought the country faced a major problem with gas prices, with many calling it a crisis.

“That spending plan the president is so proud of is causing an inflationary spiral, including gasoline prices,” Gov. Palin said on her Facebook page. “American businesses can’t afford the increase that this gas crisis is causing on the cost of their goods and services, and it’s going to put a screeching halt to job creation in this country, at a time when we are desperately in need of jobs.”

Four years ago Mr. Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill blamed the Bush administration for a gas-price increase, saying the administration had no coherent foreign policy and that overseas wars had allowed prices as high as $4.17 a gallon, and averaging $2.18.

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said that Mr. Obama “believes, like Americans do, the gas prices are too high.” The reason for the increase, Mr. Carney said, was that Congress had not approved Mr. Obama’s latest spending increases.

Experts in the news media blamed the Obama administration’s foreign policies for the high prices and as examples often named the administration’s prolonging of unrest in Libya through indecisive military action.

“We think the situation in Libya will stabilize,” said Obama, a few weeks before bombing the hell out of them.