Given the number of job bills—that would be zero—that the Republicans have introduced in the past 30 months since they captured the House majority, you would think they would by now be embarrassed to dare mention jobs, jobs, jobs as a priority when talking to their constituents. But that is, in fact, as Andrew Restuccia
writes, part of their strategy on energy for the August recess. That and bellyaching about gasoline prices without, of course, pointing out that gas is now 50 cents a gallon less than the peak it reached during George Bush's reign.
Ridiculous as their claims are, however, they resonate with many Americans, and not just those in Rush Limbaugh's dwindling audience.
The GOP strategists who will be home-turf campaigning in August on how much they hate Washington also hope to make hay by arguing in favor of more oil drilling on public land both on- and off-shore, for approval of the Keystone XL pipeline and against the "war on coal." Even though a few of these Republicans have changed gears lately and say the party must also do something about global warming, they could, according to Restuccia, find themselves undermined by the hardcore climate-change deniers in Congress.
While many Democrats have wisely pushed for more renewable energy, more efficiency standards for appliances and lighting and more fuel-conserving vehicles, there are within the party considerable obstacles to enacting climate-change policy.
Quite a few Democrats back Keystone XL, and for quite a few others it's not a big deal one way or the other. Quite a few Democrats, including the president, support more oil and gas drilling, including in the Arctic. Quite a few support natural gas fracking. And coal-state Democrats from Montana to Pennsylvania to West Virginia oppose restrictions on power-plant emissions of greenhouse gas emissions.
Like their Republican counterparts, they too often point to the creation or loss of jobs as the rationale for their stance, ignoring the jobs that would be created by full-bore development of non-carbon energy sources. So it's not as if Republicans are the only ones taking a backwards approach to energy.
Look, for instance, at how many co-sponsors the Sanders-Boxer Climate Protection Act has. (In case you don't have the energy to click, it's just Sanders and Boxer.)
Nonetheless, the Republican energy strategy could be weakened because the party's huge denier wing keeps spouting the same decades-old lying propaganda about climate change that they've been paid to do or are just too scientifically illiterate to comprehend. No need to repeat here all their claims of global-warming-is-a-hoax or added-carbon-dioxide-will-help-us-grow-more-food. Some of those comments are just ignorant but most of them are malignant, calculated efforts to disinform.
Read more about Republican campaign strategy on energy below the fold.
Republicans who don’t take climate change seriously risk losing support from women and young people, said former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican who headed the Environmental Protection Agency during George W. Bush’s first term. “The American people are beginning to make connections to the things that are happening around them.”
Some polls back up the warnings. A recent one issued by the League of Conservation Voters found that 73 percent of young voters — including 52 percent of young Republicans — would be less likely to support candidates who don’t want to address climate change. Asked to describe climate skeptics, respondents used terms like “ignorant,” “out of touch” and “crazy.”
But even though the
polls indicate that most Americans think climate change is real and is caused by humans, and say they would be willing to pay higher prices resulting from regulations designed to reduce the impact of the changes, the issue is not that high on their list of priorities.
So, in the short run, the denier scam may not be that much of a loser for Republicans in conservative districts, especially when too few climate-concerned Democratic politicians have made the effort to turn their views into legislation that contrasts with the do-nothing Republican approach.
But in the longer run, the deniers and the delayers face trouble. For people under 30, climate change registers as a very important issue.
Since only a couple of handfuls of Republicans are expressing support for even modest efforts on the matter, youth who are already more likely to be Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents can be expected to stay in those categories. That presents a problem for the GOP strategy, perhaps not immediately, but youthful impatience could soon catch up with them. But youthful voters will also present a problem for those Democrats who merely talk a good game on climate change but have been reluctant about trying to move decisively to do something about it.