Romney: 'No question' Obama wanted higher gas prices

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Sunday said that there was "no question" President Barack Obama had a plan to raise gas prices when he took office.

"When he ran for office, he said he wanted to see gas prices go up," the candidate told Fox News host Bret Baier. "He said that energy prices would skyrocket under his views. And he selected three people to help him implement that program: the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of the Interior, and the EPA administrator."

The former Massachusetts governor added that Obama needed to fire the "gas-hike trio" because he had "suffered an election-year conversion."

"Time for them to go probably hand in their resignations if he is really serious about that, and start drilling for energy here, whether that's our oil, our natural gas, take advantage of our coal resources for power generation," he said.

"These gasoline prices are hurting American families. And that pain and the result of the president's policies to turn down the Keystone pipeline from Canada, and at the same time, put $500 million into Solyndra. These policies are not working. His policies are hurting the American people. And they want to have someone who will finally take advantage of our energy resources and I will."

During a speech at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland last week, the president said that the U.S. should pursue an “all-of-the-above strategy” for developing new energy sources, including renewable energies like solar, wind and biofuels.

“Here’s the sad thing,” Obama explained to the friendly crowd. “Lately we’ve heard a lot of professional politicians — a lot of the folks who are running for a certain office, who shall go unnamed — they’ve been talking down new sources of energy. They dismiss wind power. They dismiss solar power. They make jokes about biofuels. They were against raising fuel standards. I guess they like gas guzzlers. They think that’s good for our future.”

“We’ve heard this kind of thinking before,” he added. “If some of these folks were around when Columbus set sail — they must have been founding members of the Flat-Earth Society. They would not have believed that the world was round.”

At a recent event in northeastern Ohio, Romney dismissed renewable energy, declaring that “you can’t drive a car with a windmill on it.”

Obama's campaign has accused Romney of raising taxes on gasoline by 2.5 cents per gallon while serving as governor of Massachusetts.

Watch this video from Fox's Fox News Sunday, uploaded March 18, 2012.