Posted on March
24, 2019
GOP Gets Gored
Political climate is what’s changing
by
Daniel
Clark
Conservatives have found it gratifying, not to mention
amusing, to watch the Democrats finally reveal themselves to be the outrageous,
shrieking, freedom-hating Commie loons we’ve always known them to be. Now comes the not-so-enjoyable part, where
the Republicans recognize that the center-left position has been vacated,
allowing them to move in and annex that territory for their own.
Led by first-term New York congresswomen Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Party has descended into self-parody by embracing
a grandiose, eco-pinko initiative called the Green
New Deal. This hazy collection of
collegiate Marxist mindbarf, which promotes general
goals rather than specific policies, seeks to eliminate the internal combustion
engine, end industrial farming, provide every person with a job and lifelong
economic security, and require every building in America to be reconstructed to
conform to unspecified ecological, ergonomic and other standards. It could hardly be any battier if they
adopted the whimsical proclamations made by the generalissimo in Woody Allen’s Bananas.
So,
what’s the response from the Republicans? Do they recognize that the “green”
movement has been exposed as a socialist front?
Do they argue that seeing freedom and prosperity as threats to the earth
naturally leads to totalitarianism? Do
they point out that it is increases in the earth’s temperature that cause
atmospheric CO2 levels to rise, instead of the reverse? Or that the percentage of the earth’s
atmosphere that consists of CO2 is minuscule and highly variable, such that
sudden increases are neither abnormal nor dangerous? Or that “climate scientists” have repeatedly
had to arbitrarily lower historic temperatures in order to make them appear to
be increasing today? No, they’ve decided
instead that this is the perfect time to declare their commitment to combating
“climate change.”
In a jointly written op-ed, Republican congressmen
Greg Walden, Fred Upton and John Shimkus opened by declaring, “climate change
is real,” and went on to propose that we “encourage” research and innovation
with the aim of combating it. What they
mean by that, if you consult your handy Beltway-to-English dictionary, is that
they mean to increase the already obscene amount of taxpayer money being fed
into the most voracious boondoggle in the history of government.
Meanwhile,
in a separate piece written for USA Today,
former Ohio governor and presidential candidate John Kasich advocated policies
“based on responsible economic principles of free-market capitalism,” like a
“carbon tax,” the imposition of more new taxes through a “cap and trade”
system, and yet more “subsidies for electric vehicles.” If those sound like conspicuously
anti-capitalist policies that the Democrats have embraced for the past
quarter-century, that’s because they are.
Seriously, for Kasich to characterize such violent governmental assaults
on the free market as market-based solutions is like describing napalm as an
herbal remedy.
By design, there can be no free-market approach to
combating “climate change,” because the doomsday scenario was concocted for the
very purpose of stamping out free enterprise.
To blame the imperilment of the earth on carbon dioxide is to identify
human productivity as the culprit.
That’s why the prescribed remedies have consisted of attacks against
industry, wealth, and private property.
There’s no conservative or even moderate version of that.
What we’re seeing here, which should come as a
surprise to nobody by now, is that the leaders of the GOP are not
philosophically committed to conservative ideals – which is to say, they’re
unprincipled. Their only philosophy is,
if you have to join them to beat them, so be it. If the Republicans think they have to become
the Democrats of the 90s in order to defeat the Democrats of today, then that’s
just what they’re going to do.
It can be said with total objectivity that former vice
president Al Gore is a fearmongering maniac with delusions of grandeur. It is equally true that the party that is now
endorsing his proposals for combating “climate change” is the Republicans, and
not the Democrats, who must now view the father of the eco-alarmist movement as
an overly-conventional, pro-establishment square. Is the difference between Gore and Kasich –
the latter of whom claims divine endorsement of all his liberal policy
positions – really so great?
The only climate change that is real is the change in
the political climate. As the Democrats
recede into the fever swamps of the far Left, the Republicans make a play for
the more mainstream liberal voters, confident that their conservative base
can’t afford to leave them. They may
soon find that, like their new icon Al Gore, they don’t know nearly as much as
they think.
The Shinbone: The
Frontier of the Free Press