Big Crazy

I’ve been trying to remain uninformed as to the goings on of the relentless GOP debates that have been sucking up time on the TV and radio and consuming space on websites and newspapers. It is noteworthy, however, that this weekend John Huntsman dropped out of the race.

            The candidates are not stupid individuals. Ron Paul was a physician before entering politics and Newt Gingrich has a Ph.D. Yet it has been only Huntsman to be the sole GOP candidate who is not denying the science, the reality, of global warming. Gingrich, in the past, has talked about global warming and acknowledging not only the reality of the phenomenon but the need to address the crisis. He even famously made this commercial with Nancy Pelosi about global warming.

Paul’s website equivocates on the issue but suggests that the best way to solve this “nonproblem” is to reduce regulation.

            I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Huntsman was the only candidate to acknowledge that global warming is happening and that he is one of the first GOP candidates to drop out of the race.

I have a term “big crazy.” It’s when a lot of people who should know better or could be better informed choose to believe things that are obviously loony. Belief in UFOs is big crazy. Big crazy also describes conspiracy theories. Big crazy has been around for a long time in politics. Legal segregation was big crazy. McCarthyism and the Red scare were big crazy, too.

There was a time, perhaps as little as15 or 20 years ago, when a reasonable person could have some reasonable doubts about man-made climate change. But that is no longer. With Huntsman dropping out, we now have the guarantee that the Grand Old Party’s nominee for 2012 will deny the existence of global warming. Despite the thinning ice sheets and all the science, that is the way it’s going to be. This is big crazy, and the GOP is guaranteed to give us a big crazy candidate.

I Thought This Was Supposed To Be a Debate

This is what Newt Gingrich had to say about the Keystone pipeline in last night’s GOP debate. In this quote he is referring to the GOP affixing to a payroll tax cut wording that would expedite the construction of the Keystone pipeline. Referring to president Obama’s objection to inclusion of this language, Gingrich said, “It is utterly irrational to say ‘I’m now going to veto a middle class tax cut to protect left-wing environmental extremists in San Francisco so that we’re going to kill American jobs, weaken American energy, make us more vulnerable to the Iranians, and do so in a way that makes no sense to any normal rational American’”

            I’ve written in this blog before about the rhetoric now used by politicians and others who want to roll back or do away with environmental protections or environmental regulation that may impede construction projects or energy projects such as the Keystone pipeline. But this performance in the video is a rhetorical neutron bomb, even for a rhetor such as Gingrich. He included the familiar term “left-wing environmental extremists,” as well as the geographic liberal Mecca that the GOP hates more than Mecca “San Francisco.” He also tied opposition the Keystone pipeline to the economy, American prosperity, and a supposed overseas threat from Iran.

            That Gingrich could so deftly demonize the people of South Dakota, Nebraska, and other central states who have legitimate concerns about contamination of their groundwater, that he could so harshly excoriate the environmentalists who point out that the pipeline has environmental costs greater than other energy sources, that he could so easily defend the inclusion of legislation to expedite the construction of the pipeline (a poison pill rider) in a bill providing a tax cut to most workers in this country is astonishing.

            Rhetorically astonishing, yes. But to say this is a debate is laughable. It’s highfalutin name calling, and reduces the formation of policy to the level of street brawling. No wonder the crowd cheered.