Politico has noticed a new mocking tone that the president is adopting on the stump to ridicule science-denying Republicans.
The sarcastic bear is loose, and he’s loving every minute of it.
President Barack Obama is letting his inner Don Rickles run free, mocking climate deniers as the crowd who used to think the moon was made out of cheese or spineless dopes who can’t or won’t listen to science even though the science is all overwhelmingly pointing in one direction. Their heads are in the sand. They are members of the Flat Earth Society.
The way the article portrays this mockery is as a calculated poll-tested strategy to win over younger voters who don’t respond too much to talk about polar bears or butterflies, but who do react negatively to people who simply deny the validity of science or the credibility of scientists.
I’m of two minds about this. First, it makes sense to figure out the most convincing way to talk to the public about climate change. I don’t think doing so has to be considered as inherently cynical.
Second, this is just a basic fact-based thing. If your opponents are denying reality as a political stratagem, what else can you do but mock them for it?
Ultimately, what the Republicans are doing amounts to fraud. In the example of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, denying the predicted rate of sea level rise is a way to artificially boost your property values, which is a crime against the people who will unwittingly pay too much for a house that will be under water by the end of this century.
I think we can all understand the impulse to protect the value of your property in any way you can think of, but it’s still fraud. And, since the president can’t simply prosecute every example of fraudulent political speech, his only option is to make fun of it.
Property owners in the Outer Banks should be clamoring to talk to the president about what they can do to save their property so that their grandchildren might be able to enjoy it, but they’re more interested in preventing the state of North Carolina from officially recognizing the threat. That’s short-sighted and wrong. And that’s where the whole GOP is headed on this issue.
They have earned their mockery.
