The Reprehensible McCain Repubicans

Republicans are learning something unpleasant. They’re not popular among the TEA Party crowd. I’m sure they fantasized that this grass roots movement was their natural ally. But it’s not turning out that way. Contrary to what you’ve read in newspapers or seen on television, TEA Partiers are not a creation of the Republican Party and never were. The TEA Party is an amalgam of Americans who agree that government has gotten too big, too intrusive, too expensive and too profligate in its spending.

And if Republicans really want to completely alienate this crowd and give birth to a third party, they should follow the lead of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) who has thrown his lot in with John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) to push one of the worst pieces of legislation in American history, the carbon cap and trade bill.

Aside from John McCain, no one suffers from a worse case of McCainism than Lindsey Graham. McCainism is a condition that afflicts Republicans who hunger for the approval of the Washington Post and the New York Times and who consider invitations to Meet the Press as the pinnacles of their careers. Lindsey Graham accomplished at least two of those goals this week and will probably be granted the third. In exchange he got promises that domestic oil and gas production would be accelerated and that restrictions on nuclear power would be relaxed.

Graham (and McCain) seem not to have considered what good more domestic fossil fuel development can do if we’re not allowed to use it.

According to the analyses done by the Obama Administration, cap and trade will cost every American family about $1800 per year in increased electricity costs. This conforms nicely to Obama’s prediction that his energy policy would cause energy costs to “necessarily skyrocket.” Other analyses predict that by 2050, cap and trade will reduce gross domestic product by 3.5%. Now to give you perspective, a 3.5% annual growth rate is considered a healthy economy. Cap and trade would reduce a healthy economy to a stagnant economy. Conditions that would allow a slow, but growing, economy would become a recession. A recession would become a Great Depression.

The reliably oafish John Kerry revealed that he knows exactly what the real consequence of cap and trade will be: “Let me emphasize something very strongly as we begin this discussion. The United States has already this year alone achieved a 6 percent reduction in emissions simply because of the downturn in the economy, so we are effectively saying we need to go another 14 percent.”

Considering the pain that we had to suffer to take the American economy only 30% of the way toward Kerry’s goal, who really wants to give him what he seeks?

The dirtiest secret of all is that even if cap and trade passes and accomplishes what its advocates claim, it won’t make a significant difference. Cap and trade reduces carbon emissions enough to depress economies, but not nearly enough to change climatic outcomes. That’s because, even if one accepts these climate models (which a growing number of climatologists do not), cap and trade will not reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It will only slow the rate of increase.

And really, what’s the hurry? Temperatures have been gradually declining for more than a decade. Last year, Geologist David Gee, chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress rhetorically asked, “For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?”

The Earth is indeed cooling. The leftwing BBC took notice of this and followed with explanations from climatologists that the Earth could be expected to see another 20 years of global cooling. National Public Radio recently did a report about how the oceans are definitely cooling.

The Kyoto Protocols that global warming alarmists believe were carried down from Mount Sinai on stone tablets are only expected to accomplish a fraction of a degree slowing in the rate of temperature increase. If memory serves, the Kyoto Protocols were only predicted to reduce global temperature increases by less than one degree Fahrenheit by 2100. And for that paltry, insignificant, theoretical and probably imaginary reduction in the rate of global warming, Lindsey Graham is willing to paralyze America’s economy. If that’s Republicanism, then count me out.
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