As is splashed across the international wires, Labor delivered the Liberals a devastating defeat in Saturday's Australian national election.
And the issue central to that victory?
GLOBAL WARMING, AND CLIMATE CHANGE IN AUSTRALIA (i.e. an unprecedented drought)
This will be the core issue of national and global politics for the decades to come. It may also be at the core of an historic realignment in American politics,
UNLESS THE REPUBLICANS TAKE THEIR LAST CHANCE BEFORE 2008 TO ACT ON GLOBAL WARMING.
From CNN in Australia we have this insightful excerpt:
The last time Labor toppled a conservative Coalition government was 1983. Ronald Reagan was still a first term president.
Such momentous changes – should they be confirmed by the voters - indicate something important. The Bill Clinton/James Carville mantra, taken up since by both sides, "It’s the economy, stupid" will have been turned on its head.
If that happens, climate change may emerge as a decisive issue. Indeed, global warming may have contributed for the first time ever to the toppling of a national government.
Of Australia’s two major parties, Labor has made climate change its issue. Howard’s coalition has been far too late to spot the danger.
Until recently, Howard enjoyed the sport of dismissing global warming as the obsession of a crackpot fringe. It left him flatfooted. His attempted re-positioning, promoting nuclear power as a potential answer, failed to grip in a country that currently has only a single research reactor. No-one has yet found a community keen to have one built down the road.
Now not just country areas, grappling with a record drought but middle class suburbanites fret over a warming planet. Already farms are reverting to deserts and urban water supplies are strained.
Veteran conservative commentator Piers Akerman says there is a warning here for US Republicans. "Climate change is definitely a vote winner with younger voters these days," he says. "You must be aware of it and you must have a coherent policy to address it."
Associate Professor Rodney Smith from the politics department of the University of Sydney goes further, saying the Australian experience is that it is not just young voters taking it up. Polls show it draws a strong response, he says, among older voters too. And it crosses traditional party lines.
Notice that "momentous" refers to global warming, not "its the economy stupid". Notice the clear warning from the conservatives in Australia to the Republicans here. And notice the similarity in global warming policy of big loser Howard to the policies of all the Republicans candidates today, except McCain.
This could be the Republican's last chance to grasp their political peril that parallels the peril our planet faces. Or, will they remain tethered to the failed Bush-Cheney catastrophe.
What do you think?