Moderate Republicans Getting Smarter on Climate Change

Politico seems a bit surprised that Republicans who previously expressed support for cap-and-tax legislation are now running away from it, and their analysis of the situation is clearly missing something. See if you can figure out what that is:

In late June, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) was a critical swing vote on climate change, helping Democrats put the cap-and-trade bill over the top in a cliffhanger roll call vote.

By September, Kirk had totally cooled on the global warming measure, saying he would vote against cap and trade if he happened to become a senator.

That’s what a Republican primary will do for a moderate. Kirk’s running for President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat in Illinois, but he’s got challenges from the right, and he’s worked up a very careful explanation of why he was one of just eight House Republicans to vote for the climate bill.

“Let me say briefly about cap and trade: I voted for it because it was in the narrow interest of my congressional district,” Kirk said at a Republican event in September. “As your representative, representing the entire state of Illinois, I would vote no on that bill coming up.”

Kirk is one of a growing group of Republican candidates flip-flopping away from cap and trade as they stare down more-conservative primary challengers. Republicans who once flouted their green bona fides are tacking right, to the point of questioning the science behind global warming, believing it’s politically toxic within the conservative base to favor anything Democrats want to do about the climate.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who built his maverick reputation on crafting climate legislation, has emerged as a vocal critic of the Democratic bills. Charlie Crist, the Florida governor once known as “Gov. Green,” canceled his climate summit this year and has dropped most of his environmental initiatives. And even in California, considered to be at the forefront of environmental policy, Republican candidate Carly Fiorina urged lawmakers to have the “courage” to re-examine the scientific basis of global warming.

“This issue has become very, very radioactive,” said former Virginia Rep. Tom Davis, the onetime chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “People have started to run away from this.”

Democrats say that Republican opposition to the legislation will hurt them at the polls on Election Day, arguing that their polling shows that most voters see the climate bill as a chance to create new, clean energy jobs.

This lengthy article which goes on long after the excerpt above doesn't even mention ClimateGate. Granted, moderates are going to be facing conservative challengers and that may make their knees a little weak on cap-and-tax, but the exploding revelations of ClimateGate should make any sane person from either party run away from this repressive bill. The cap-and-tax supporters are asking us to destroy our economy because of a complete scientific fraud.

As far as the Democrat suggestion that voters see cap-and-tax as a chance to create new, clean energy jobs, that's just fiction. Voters see cap-and-tax as a job killing, tax raising monstrosity that needs to be stopped. And given the revelations of ClimateGate, voters are going to think that anyone supporting this legislation is an idiot.