Republican strategists have laid out an aggressive game plan for seizing the high ground on energy during the August recess: talk about gas prices and jobs, jobs, jobs.
But some Republicans are straying from the script, spouting off instead about the Book of Genesis, claims about scientific conspiracies and arguments that the Earth is cooling. And they show no signs of stifling their skepticism — even at the risk of providing a stream of YouTube-worthy sound bites that play into Democrats’ own strategy, which includes painting the GOP as the anti-science party.
The Republicans’ skeptic caucus includes Texas Rep. Joe Barton, a former House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, who grabbed headlines in April when he called Noah’s flood “an example of climate change,” and California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who told POLITICO that the idea of manmade global warming is a “fraud” and a “big lie.” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), former chairman of the Environment and Public Works panel, has famously called climate change the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” a phrase he used for the title of his book on the topic.
The skeptics don’t speak for all Republicans, but they complicate the task of GOP leaders who want voters to focus on their warnings that President Barack Obama’s climate proposals will wipe out jobs and raise energy prices. Meanwhile, Democrats — some of them eager to downplay the economic implications of Obama’s plans — are only too thrilled to swing the spotlight to a debate about science.
via Congress’s climate skeptics could snarl GOP’s strategy – Andrew Restuccia – POLITICO.com.
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