It’s funny, but one of the things that fascinates me about the modern Republican Party is that they actually do very little pandering to anyone but their base. They don’t care how they are perceived by intellectuals or scientists or foreign countries or young people. They have to be concerned about independent swing-voters, but they’re happy to appeal to their basest instincts and let the chips fall where they may. They make no pretense of liking black people and they do an awful job of appealing to Hispanics. They have no interest in winning LGBT votes. So, it is strangely refreshing to see Sen. Lindsey Graham at least take a longer view when Tom Friedman asks him why he is willing to consider tackling climate change.
“I have been to enough college campuses to know if you are 30 or younger this climate issue is not a debate. It’s a value. These young people grew up with recycling and a sensitivity to the environment — and the world will be better off for it. They are not brainwashed. … From a Republican point of view, we should buy into it and embrace it and not belittle them. You can have a genuine debate about the science of climate change, but when you say that those who believe it are buying a hoax and are wacky people you are putting at risk your party’s future with younger people. You can have a legitimate dispute about how to solve immigration, but when you start focusing on the last names of people the demographics will pass you by.”
In that last part he is referring to immigration reform and the Republicans’ problem with Hispanics. Now, personally, I feel like Sen. Graham displays a limited but badly needed level of self-awareness about what the Republicans need to do going forward to be a genuine party within the American two-party system. Sure, the Republicans can pick up seats with their current approach, but the demographics argue against them holding steady as a legitimate threat to overtake the Democrats for power in Washington.
But what confuses me is that Graham thinks he can save his party by making a lonely stand for sanity on climate change and immigration reform. His party will get no credit for one vote out of forty-one in the Senate. I have no problem with doing the right thing, but to think that there will be a political benefit for the GOP as a whole just strikes me as delusional.
Actually, what he says makes perfect sense, and it’s not a new argument. What’s new about it — or seems new in the present context — is to see a Republican making this argument — and what’s more, making it to other Republicans. If the GOP is the party of making money, they need to realize that you can make money by being environmentally responsible. The planet is so fu¢ked up that there are limitless things that need to be done to fix it. But the incentives are skewed — existing law encourages pollution, energy inefficiency, and environmental costs. Major international legislation like climate change legislation will be a great generator of economic opportunity — i.e. investment. China, Japan, Europe are all ahead of us in this game. We’re losing out.
Of course, in the present state of GOP degeneracy, all this is probably incomprehensible. But the GOP in that form is on a handcar to hell. So is it really wrong for Graham to think that his way is the way of the future? He’s right.
Well, consider how fucked we are.
The point is, the whole message of Reaganomics was that trying to control this stuff just means big gummint gettin in the way of economic development. But this ain’t economic development. The USA hasn’t had any real economic development in 10 years or more. Cleaning it up would be economic development.
Boo:
It’s all kabuki. Do you really think, when the chips are down, that Graham is going to vote for any bill on either subject that is worth a damn? He won’t. You can take that to the bank.
If he can craft the climate bill, he’ll vote for it. Will it be a good bill? Of course not.
Same for immigration reform.
When it comes to concrete reality, I don’t trust any Republican farther than I can throw him. But I understood Boo’s question as almost a theoretical one. It is POSSIBLE for a Republican to make that sort of argument, and in fact there was a lot of Republican input into the environmental movement at one time, and a lot of Democratic resistance to it, under the theory that it would stifle industry and job creation.
Much like Olympia Snowe and health care, Graham is there to be the veneer of bipartisanship so that the GOP can turn the call for climate legislation into as big of a gift for big business as possible.
Graham’s job is to turn cap and trade into the Clean Coal And Nuclear Power Plant Act of 2010. When the Dems balk, Graham will walk, and the bill will be delayed until there’s enough of a Republican bill on the table that the Dems will have to take the fall for.
I found it hard to get past the first part of Graham’s quote:
Graham has to go to college campuses to understand that there’s a climate change problem? I retract that question. When he goes to college campuses, he’s not persuaded there’s a climate change problem, he only sees a voter support problem. So, he wants to lead by jumping in front of the parade that’s already in progress. Agreeing with Booman, I’m not convinced that Graham will make any earnest efforts to fix the underlying problem unless he finds a parade already heading in that direction.
What did strike me most (cynically) was this quote:
There it is in black and white. Graham’s frank acknowledgment that GOP politicians won’t do anything unless the leading business lobbies tell them what to do.
This is nothing that we don’t already know but has any politician admitted so clearly that they set policy only at the behest of major lobbyists?
Cap and trade should be abandoned anyway, because it’s simply not going to happen. There’s too many coal-friendly Democrats to even get close.
Small clean energy bills, I think, are the way to go. Then use the EPA to institute a carbon tax. I don’t see that happened, though, as they freaking balked already at other things they were supposed to do.
It’s getting downright pathetic.