After health-care defeat, petulant Republicans threaten to scuttle the earth
What's that, Lindsey Graham? Image by Getty Images via Daylife
It’s a sorry enough state of affairs that we live in a nation where two precious Senate seats are occupied by the likes of James Inhofe (R-Ok), who invokes his peculiar God to deny climate change, and Tom Coburn (R-Ok), who would sooner see misfortune befall a colleague than help millions of Americans acquire health insurance.
We were hoping it was just an Oklahoma thing. This is a state, after all, that wants to publish personal information about women who get abortions.
But now even the most reasonable members of the Republican Party are behaving like spoiled children, burning down the house because Santa didn’t bring them a Wii.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is the lynchpin vote for the U.S. to pass a law limiting greenhouse gas emissions next year. He and Joe Lieberman agreed to play along only after Democrats accepted concessions promoting nuclear energy, offshore oil drilling, and oxymoronic clean coal.
A U.S. law limiting carbon emissions, meanwhile, is crucial to an equally fragile international effort to keep the planet from overheating.
That makes Lindsey Graham far more important to life on earth than any one man ought to be. Which should make us all concerned when he starts stomping his feet on the playground. Here he is dropping hints to Larry King Sunday night:
The bill I’m looking for is to find gas and oil here in America. Every barrel we find at home we don’t have to buy overseas, to create a renaissance in nuclear power and clean coal and control carbon emissions, put a price on carbon so the green economy will come. To me, it’s about jobs, not about polar bears. It’s about national security. But at the end of the day, I want to work with this administration.
But this health care proposal has made it very hard for Republicans to sit down at the table with these guys because of the way they’ve run over us.
And here he is quoted by Lisa Lerer yesterday:
It makes it hard to do anything because of the way this was handled,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
Graham didn’t elaborate, but he didn’t have to — the fierce partisan fights during the past few weeks have torn away at the Senate’s clubby decorum, raising temperatures, fraying nerves and creating what one Democratic senator has called a “very high” level of distrust among members.
via GOP warns of harsh climate on energy bill – - POLITICO.com.
Lerer registers more blatant petulance from three other Republicans who, in some dreamers’ hearts, might have been expected to support the new clean-energy economy in return for sufficient compensation for the old dirty-energy economy: Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Richard Lugar of Indiana.
It will be an ironic history whenever some surviving species evolves sufficiently to write it: Sorry, America, you got one procedural vote closer to health care for all your citizens, only have the planet pulled out from under you.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Green News Examiner, healthy. healthy said: After health-care vote, petulant Republicans threaten to scuttle …: It's a sorry enough state of affairs that we … http://bit.ly/4MUboL [...]
Why is it lines are already forming at the polling places with people who can’t wait to vote obama, reid, pelosi, nelson…..out of office
You were just having a nightmare, Andy.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] coal, and nuclear plants. Still, Republicans stung by defeat in the health-care debate have threatened to withhold [...]
[...] coal, and nuclear plants. Still, Republicans stung by defeat in the health-care debate have threatened to withhold support, and now conservative Democrats in the Senate are urging their colleagues and [...]
Now that they’ve lost the Mass. seat in the Senate, I wonder how the Dems are going to proceed. Will they be clear and strong in standing by progressive beliefs and the science of climate change? Or will they attempt the same strategies that created so much dissonance both in DC and throughout the country? Or will they all transform into republicans?
Rocky, I think it’s interesting that people associate “clear and strong” Democrats with progressive policies, when there are, in fact, only 83 progressive Democrats in the House, out of 256 members of the Democratic Party. It’s important to remember that it’s a coalition party, that it contains many members who look very much like Republicans but who are, simply by virtue of being Democrats, willing to consider cooperating with other members of the coalition. A lot of the progressive frustration with Democrats comes from the misapprehension that Democrats are supposed to be progressive. In fact, the party just contains progressives.
In response to another comment. See in context »You’re right of course. The thrill of the presidential campaign season made me forget. It’s just that it seemed we had it all in our hands again—that transcendent moment. [Yes, I'm remembering the 60s.] Well, I’m also reminded that the government cannot bring about change until the people they represent have already changed. We’ll all have to work on that.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] has been the weak link in that tri-partisan chain since passage of the health care bill, when he warned health care might cost the Democrats any Republican support for even a deeply weakened climate [...]
[...] energy bill that would begin to shift the United States away from fossil fuels. He seemed to withdraw that support before the month was over, saying the way the Democrats passed health-care reform in [...]