# How is all this Republican overreach going to play out in November 2014? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [July 7, 2013, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884 "2013-07-07T18:55:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2013, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/121 "2013-07-13T23:52:45Z")
The protests were organized online, which is why they were kinda small, but huge in the aggregate. I know these were organized by grassroots activists, because I knew many of the activists. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/122 "2013-07-14T00:10:37Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > The protests were organized online, which is why they were kinda small, but huge in the aggregate. I know these were organized by grassroots activists, because I knew many of the activists. Anecdote is bot data, in any case you can get the impression of grassroots while at the same time the funding is not apparent, as I posted before regarding climate change, I found that even sincere tea partiers that had an environmental conscience found early that the ones paying got people like them out of the picture early. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/123 "2013-07-14T00:12:14Z")
YOu still haven’t explained though how the Tea party can be astroturfed, yet completely uncontrollable. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/124 "2013-07-14T00:17:49Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Snowboarder, it makes you look incredibly dumb to just declare me wrong on the Tea party’s grassroots nature. That’s the whole problem with the supposedly intellectual liberal class. Including [RationalWiki](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tea_party_movement#Organization)? > [@](#): > > **Organization** > > The origins of these teabaggings depends on who you ask. Right wingers insist that this movement is a totally organic, grassroots effort that sprang up overnight. Everyone else realizes this is a media stunt astroturfed by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Koch Industries, Inc.,[6] CNBC, and Fox News.[7] These demonstrations took place everywhere from Kentucky to California, but were thwarted in Washington, D.C. because they didn’t have a permit to dump a million tea bags into the sea[8] (way to organize, guys!). > > The first use of the Tea Party iconography started in 2007 during Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. However, the Tea Parties were limited to Paul die-hards and never gained mainstream traction until Santelli dredged the idea back up on CNBC in 2009. It didn’t take long for the astroturf machine to move in after that. > > More than $850,000 of the money the supposedly grassroots political action committee collected went to the firm of GOP political operatives who ran it.[9] > > More simply put, the “organization” consists of some printed paper yanking on a short string, to which is attached a tissue paper bag full of jumbled shredded leaves, which are steeped by soaking them in boiling water. > > **Factions** > > By the end of 2009, various groups had formed claiming to be the leaders of the tea-party movement, including the Tea Party Patriots and the Tea Party Nation.[10][11] On February 4-6 , 2010 the Tea Party Nation hosted the first ever national convention in Nashville, Tennessee with guest speaker Sarah Palin.[12] The convention was attacked by teabaggers for being distant from the supposedly grassroots movement, with tickets costing $549.[13] > > The largest tea party organizations by size are:[14] > Tea Party Patriots > ResistNet > Tea Party Nation > FreedomWorks Tea Party > 1776 Tea Party[15] > > **Ensuring Liberty Corporation** > > At the First Teabagging Convention, Mark Scoda, a Memphis businessman, announced the creation of Ensuring Liberty Corporation, a Memphis based company with a political action group that would fund “Tea Party candidates” - that is, politicians supportive of the tea party movement which he described as: “Less government, fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, states rights, and national security.” It will be accepting corporate donations.[16] > > **Astroturf organization** > > Despite claims that it is a “grassroots” organisation, the Tea Party has merely become another patsy for the US’s health care insurance companies to fight healthcare reform. The “Tea Party Caucus” received donations of $2.7 million from the health care sector, which also contributed towards a $25 million “war chest” to be used by the Tea Party to fight the elections.[17][18] > > One insurer has gone so far as to urge employees to attend anti-healthcare Tea Party rallies.[19][20] > > The two main 'Bagger astroturf groups are FreedomWorks headed by Dick Armey and Americans for Prosperity. Both were spun off from the Koch-bankrolled Citizens for a Sound Economy. The Kochs denied any connection to the Tea Parties. A few months after that statement, a video leaked of Teabag state chapter leaders reporting directly to David Koch himself at the Americans for Prosperity mothership.[21] (But they’re grassroots, honest!) > > Sadly, most Tea Party members are too full of righteous indignation and are too stupid to realise they are merely pawns in a gambit by their corporate backers to ensure they retain their profits… at the cost of the very people who are cheering them on. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/125 "2013-07-14T00:19:51Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > All of the organizations cited in this thread are pro-immigration reform corporations. Yet the Tea Party is anti-immigration reform. And it’s not the only issue on which the Tea Party has proved uncontrollable. How important is immigration to the TP anyway? It’s not mentioned in the [Contract from America](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_from_America) and I’ve never seen it mentioned on a rally-sign. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/126 "2013-07-14T00:22:20Z")
But it’s very important to their corporate backers, yet the Tea Parties aren’t having any of it. Then there’s the Tea party candidates, who more often than not defeated Republicans funded with more corporate money. The fatal flaw in all these arguments is that the corporate world LIKES the Republicans as they are. The last thing they wanted was an anti-corporate welfare, anti-earmarking movement. Sure, they like the fact that the Tea party hates regulation, but then the mainstream GOP hates regulation. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/127 "2013-07-14T00:31:49Z")
> **[Tea Party Patriots](https://www.facebook.com/teapartypatriots?ref=ts&fref=ts)** > > Tea Party Patriots. 1,514,510 likes · 47,328 talking about this. Tea Party Patriots stands for every American and is home to millions who have come together to pursue the American Dream and to keep... Most of the effort of the supposedly astroturf Tea Party Patriots has been towards opposing immigration reform. Now, if they rely on money from the groups you mentioned, why aren’t they falling into line? Shouldn’t they be listening to their donors, rather than their footsoldiers? Armey’s pro-reform. The Kochs are pro-reform. Where is the anti-reform money coming from? Answer: there is none. Democrats have been gleeful about how corporate and labor interests wrote the bill. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/128 "2013-07-14T00:35:23Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Now, if they rely on money from the groups you mentioned, why aren’t they falling into line? Shouldn’t they be listening to their donors, rather than their footsoldiers? Yeah, just like the post-Soviet Afghan government danced to every note of the American tune. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/129 "2013-07-14T00:35:25Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > YOu still haven’t explained though how the Tea party can be astroturfed, yet completely uncontrollable. What part of what I said early “that it only needs to oppose taxes to fossil fuels” does not qualify as an explanation? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/130 "2013-07-14T00:37:03Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Someone is completely oblivious to the obvious split occuring in the Republican Party. He imagines that the different skin colors of his party’s convention belies the Soviet like discipline of its members. :rolleyes: “Soviet like discipline” among **Democrats?! If only!** Some in the GOP see the reverse of the picture you paint. [This article](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/can-the-republicans-be-saved-from-obsolescence.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) from _New York Times Magazine_ is about how superior the Obama campaign was to the Romney campaign in making use of information technology – but not that alone. > [@](#): > > On Nov. 30, more than 2,000 progressives shuffled into the Washington Convention Center to participate in RootsCamp, an annual series of seminars hosted by the New Organizing Institute, where the most cutting-edge digital and grass-roots organizing techniques are discussed. The shaggy and the achingly earnest are well represented at RootsCamp, which makes it an easy target of derision from the right. A reporter from the conservative publication The Daily Caller attended the postelection gathering in 2010 and made great sport of the “unconference,” with its self-conscious inclusiveness, which the reporter termed “multilingual, multicultural and multi-unpurposeful.” > > But the handful of conservatives who attended the conference this past November were in no mood to sneer. One was Patrick Ruffini, a 34-year-old leader of the G.O.P.’s young-and-restless digerati. At RootsCamp, his breathless tweets of the sessions held by top Obama organizers — “In eight years, calling people will be obsolete”; “Digital organizing director and field director will be one and the same” — set off a buzz among Republican techies. Ruffini was plainly impressed by the openness of the experience. “I’m like, Wow, they’re doing this in front of 2,000 people, and the system seems to actually work,” he told me a month later. “The thing I was struck by at RootsCamp was that in many ways, the Democratic technology ecosystem has embraced the free market — whereas the Republican one sort of runs on socialism, with the R.N.C. being the overlord.” > > \ > > Many young conservatives also said that technological innovation runs at cross-purposes with the party’s corporate rigidity. “There’s a feeling that Republican politics are more hierarchical than in the Democratic Party,” Ben Domenech, a 31-year-old blogger and research fellow at the libertarian Heartland Institute, told me. “There are always elders at the top who say, ‘That’s not important.’ And that’s where the left has beaten us, by giving smart people the space and trusting them to have success. It’s a fundamentally anti-entrepreneurial model we’ve embraced.” > > Erik Telford explained it this way: “I think there’s a very incestuous community of consultants who profit off certain tactics, and that creates bias and inhibits innovation.” Telford was suggesting that many of the party leaders, like Karl Rove and his American Crossroads super PAC, saw no financial advantage to bringing in avant-garde digital specialists, the types who were embraced by the Obama operation. For that matter, Zac Moffatt and his firm, Targeted Victory, enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the G.O.P.’s digital business during the lackluster 2012 cycle, which has made Moffatt an irresistible symbol for all that’s clubby and backward-thinking about the party. As Bret Jacobson said, half-jokingly, “If you have one firm that’s doing the top candidate, plus the R.N.C., plus the top outside group — the Department of Justice, in any other industry, would be actively asking questions.” > > One of several G.O.P. digital whizzes who went unused by Moffatt’s shop in 2012 was Vincent Harris, a savvy 24-year-old social-media consultant whose efforts in Texas helped catapult Ted Cruz to an upset victory over a better-known candidate in the U.S. Senate primary. Harris told me he saw the Romney campaign as “a very insular, closed operation,” symptomatic of a partywide affliction. “There’s an old guard in Republican politics, and that old guard is mostly made up of television and direct-mail consultants,” he said. “And you can say that’s generational — but at the same time, David Axelrod has to be the same age as Karl Rove, right? The old guard in the Democratic Party made the adjustment with the Obama digital operation. There hasn’t been a concerted effort among the established G.O.P. folks to figure this stuff out.” > > Harris suffers no illusions that the Roves of his party will turn over the keys to young techies like him. “We’re the second rung,” he told me. “The first tier isn’t going away for another 20 years.” ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/131 "2013-07-14T00:41:22Z")
As pointed before, that the Republicans they got elected come with other baggage is not a problem for the Koch brothers or BP. Once again, others noticed where the funding and organization for the Tea Partiers came from: > **[Tea Party Supporters Wealthier, More Educated - Still Bitter](https://www.desmog.com/2010/04/19/tea-party-supporters-wealtheir-more-educated-still-bitter/)** > > Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more educated than average Americans, and they are more likely than the average to declare that their personal financial situation is fairly good or very good, according to a new poll by the New York Times and... > [@](#): > > That, at least, is the only way I can explain why people who are better off and, on balance, satisfied with the country’s most controversial forays into “socialism,” remain outraged at the performance of their government and determined to blame all of its failings on a guy who took office just weeks before Tea Party protests began - at which time when the wars were already started and the economy was already on its face. > > The argument for media responsibility rests of two points. First, the Tea Party phenomenon has been consistently reported as a serendipitous, grassroots upswelling of public anger, notwithstanding the evidence that it has been organized, funded and promoted by highly partisan groups like FreedomWorks, and Americans for Prosperity - both of them fronting for the deeply self-interested Koch Industries. If well-off and well-educated Americans are joining an angry protest, it’s at least in part because they have the impression that their well-off and well-educated neighbours started it. They have been suckered and the media have been part of the play. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/132 "2013-07-14T00:42:12Z")
Gigo, the Tea party, being conservative, was already going to support the fossil fuel industry. The Republican party already supported the fossil fuel industry. Much of the Democratic Party already supports the fossil fuel industry. The Tea Party did not arise because the fossil fuel industry needed yet more supporters. And your last post is hilarious, this idea that millions of people can be suckered into supporting a movement because they erroneously believe it is grassroots. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/133 "2013-07-14T00:46:54Z")
If this was an honest attempt to understand the Tea Party by the left, it would be a good example of overanalyzing a situation. Millions of people support the Tea Party, and they are very motivated voters. The idea that they are all just being fooled is as ridiculous as the claim that this or that group votes Democrat because they are fooled. But since it’s not an honest attempt to understand, but rather a conclusion in search of evidence to support it, we can take it for what it is. Again, if the Tea party isn’t grassroots, I’d like to know what is. Anyone care to give an example? And before someone plays gotcha, let me clarify that the grassroots example should be national, not your local Fight for the Puppies organization run by a nice old lady in her spare time. National movements by definition involve big players, thus all can be fairly or unfairly called astroturfed if you have an axe to grind. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/134 "2013-07-14T00:50:47Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Gigo, the Tea party, being conservative, was already going to support the fossil fuel industry. The Republican party already supported the fossil fuel industry. Much of the Democratic Party already supports the fossil fuel industry. > > The Tea Party did not arise because the fossil fuel industry needed yet more supporters. > > And your last post is hilarious, this idea that millions of people can be suckered into supporting a movement because they erroneously believe it is grassroots. Millions thought that Palin was a good candidate, because Republican leaders and right wing propaganda told them so, also that Romney was going to win :). The difference remains, climate change denial is the norm with tea partiers, I do remember clearly how people that were indeed tea partiers from the beginning found out that the talking points were already made and they had become mouthpieces for the fossil fuel industry, they found too late that they were manipulated, of course a good chunk do not mind being manipulated. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/135 "2013-07-14T00:58:13Z")
Giving talking points is cheesy, but no one mouths talking points they don’t agree with. Manipulation is when you go to an anti-war protest and get handed Communist pamphlets. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/136 "2013-07-14T01:02:35Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Giving talking points is cheesy, but no one mouths talking points they don’t agree with. Actually in the example I remember the “grassroots” lady had her trip to a climate change meet of nations paid, and she had to read a position paper that she did not agree with. > [@adaher](#): > > Manipulation is when you go to an anti-war protest and get handed Communist pamphlets. Indeed, so when are you going to tell all other tea partiers to stop being so obtuse on climate change? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/137 "2013-07-14T01:19:57Z")
From my own mingling with Tea Partiers, they are not obtuse on climate change. Some are genuine deniers, others agree it’s a serious issue but don’t think government action is useful or warranted. That’s one of the problems I have with liberals. When it comes to matters of foreign policy, they understand that some problems just cannot be solved and intervention can have unintended consequences. But on domestic issues, they believe that all problems are solvable, or that “we at least have to try!” But with an issue like climate change, there’s very little the government can do, and much of it is potentially worse than the disease. You know what would be helpful though, and it’s something many conservatives support? A revenue neutral carbon tax. End the payroll tax, subsitute a carbon tax. The reason this doesn’t actually get suggested is that it splits both parties. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/138 "2013-07-14T01:23:15Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > But with an issue like climate change, there’s very little the government can do, and much of it is potentially worse than the disease. Cite? > [@adaher](#): > > You know what would be helpful though, and it’s something many conservatives support? A revenue neutral carbon tax. End the payroll tax, subsitute a carbon tax. The reason this doesn’t actually get suggested is that it splits both parties. What makes you think that could be revenue neutral? And it’s never gonna fly if we have to feel the pain at the gas pump. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/139 "2013-07-14T01:30:10Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > From my own mingling with Tea Partiers, they are not obtuse on climate change. Some are genuine deniers, others agree it’s a serious issue but don’t think government action is useful or warranted. > > That’s one of the problems I have with liberals. When it comes to matters of foreign policy, they understand that some problems just cannot be solved and intervention can have unintended consequences. But on domestic issues, they believe that all problems are solvable, or that “we at least have to try!” But with an issue like climate change, there’s very little the government can do, and much of it is potentially worse than the disease. > > You know what would be helpful though, and it’s something many conservatives support? A revenue neutral carbon tax. End the payroll tax, subsitute a carbon tax. The reason this doesn’t actually get suggested is that it splits both parties. Obviously your friends are not aware of Republican Scientist Richard Alley, as even he points out the issue is solvable with no need to stop civilization and just because the left is more in tune with the science, there is really no logical reason to use partisanship with this issue, unless some powerful interests wants it that way. > **[Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy](https://skepticalscience.com/richard-alley-we-can-afford-clean-energy.html)** > > Re-posted from Climate Crocks, an excellent video showing Richard Alley debunking the myths Renewable energy is too expensive and CO2 is not a pollutant in one fell swoop.  This video is well worth watching: So I have to insist, the tea partiers are scientifically and economically wrong on this issue, in positions of government they are the blind guiding the blind, indeed their pamphlets are already made and distributed with no independent thought. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2013, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884/140 "2013-07-14T01:31:37Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Cite? I was making an argument, not quoting a fact. Do you disagree that higher energy prices would do harm to the economy? > [@](#): > > What makes you think that could be revenue neutral? And it’s never gonna fly if we have to feel the pain at the gas pump. All climate change proposals involve increasing the price of energy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-is-all-this-republican-overreach-going-to-play-out-in-november-2014/662884.md?page=8)