Expect a lot more like this piece in The Atlantic during August.
From “Republican Climate Denial Is No Political Problem — For Now“:
Politico’s overly gentle article on climate “skeptics” is predicated on that non-existent political problem: Will the party’s opposition to climate change make the party’s energy strategy more difficult? Will the arguments of Barton (the Great Flood was climate change) and Rohrabacher (there was bad weather a century ago, too) make the Republican argument on energy a tough sell? Part of the Republican House leadership’s plan for the August recess is to bring the party’s energy message — more oil drilling, essentially — to congressional districts. Will denial of the scientific reality of climate change make that trickier?…
That bridge argument only applies to Americans who aren’t deeply invested in the political debate. Partisans are already committed: Drill, baby, drill versus Earth first. (As we reported in May, that trend hasn’t shifted much.) No matter how much advocates demand the opposite, including the young advocates who’ve been forcing the issue, the debate on climate change remains stubbornly non-scientific. It’s political. Over the immediate term, that makes Joe Barton and Dana Rohrabacher’s “skepticism” perfectly fine. And the Republican party has plenty of time before those young voters the LCV points to start becoming the majority on election day.
“Dems, MSM–” Are you telling us they are two separate entities?
“Will denial of the scientific reality of climate change make that trickier?…”
“…the debate on climate change remains stubbornly non-scientific. It’s political.”
Considering it’s the “progressives”, politically the Dems, who are not scientific and who are using scare stories for political ends, those statements are correct. But, to paraphrase Iniego Montoya, “I do not think they mean what you think they mean.”
Most Congressional districts are drawn to favor one party or the other heavily. The few that are competitive, like most Senate races and the presidential race, turn on a small number of voters near the center. The deeply committed red and blue voters form the base — lose the base and you lose the primary — but the squishy center turns the election itself.
That means that conservative-libertarian candidates must do two overlapping-and-kinda-contradictory things: convince enough of the middle to earn their votes and avoid scaring the middle so as not to lose their votes.
When people at far left or far right, and I’m rather a righty, complain about the squishiness of political leaders, we should remember the importance of squishy voters.
omnologos is correct that nearly all “green” energy, and a lot more of the “environmental” agenda, is actually worse for the environment than conventional energy and conventional industry.
In truth, anybody who cares about Earth has to fight against the green onslaught of Palm oil, deforested Wind power generation, neglected environmental issues, etc etc