This NYTimes link is from my local paper. Maybe it won’t be paywalled.
WASHINGTON — When Rep. John Curtis quietly approached fellow Republicans to invite them to discuss climate change at a clandestine meeting in his home state of Utah, he hoped a half-dozen members might attend.
Soon the guest list blew past expectations as lawmakers heard about the gathering and asked to be included. For two days in February, 24 Republicans gathered in a ballroom of the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City where they brainstormed ways to get their party to engage on a planetary problem it has ignored for decades.
“Some came with the promise of being anonymous. It’s terrible that Republicans can’t even go talk about it without being embarrassed,” Curtis said.
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Now, many in the Republican Party are coming to terms with what polls have been saying for years: Independents, suburban voters and especially young Republicans are worried about climate change and want the government to take action.
“There is a recognition within the GOP that if the party is going to be competitive in national elections, in purple states and purple districts, there needs to be some type of credible position on climate change,” said George David Banks, a former adviser to Trump and now a senior fellow at the nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center, a centrist Washington think tank.
Republicans realize it’s now “a political liability” to dismiss or even avoid discussing climate change, he said.
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The people who give them money are concerned about how climate change may cost them money. They called their pet republican to discuss how to arrange laws to protect their money.
Their toady republican then needs to do their bidding if they want to keep their job.
They seem to be hell-bent on getting elected for its own sake. They don’t have any policies, goals, plans, programs to help people (sorry, couldn’t resist! ). They just want to be elected so they (1) can go on…um, being elected and (2) stop whatever the Democrats want to do. <shrug> ‘Cause they can get rich without having to work at real jobs? I got nuttin’ here.
Although being a U.S. Rep is sort of a lousy job. You don’t get paid that much, most of them can’t grift for that much (there are too many reps - you need to be a standout to make bank).
I don’t think it’s that bad a job for crazy Marjorie. No committee assignments, just spout bullshit at the top of her lungs and collect speaking fees.
We should be encouraged that at last, at least a few Republicans acknowledge that there is an issue to be faced. Of course their base would have them tarred and feathered if they found out who was there but it’s at least a slim sign of hope.
Yeah, they seem more concerned with appearances and getting elected than, you know, working on solutions for the problem at hand. Having positions and making campaign promises is one thing, so let’s see if any of these people are willing to actually, like “do” something in this space.
That said, I would not dismiss this effort and these people altogether - in fact, I would encourage and engage with them, mainly to ensure they are working with the facts, and not “their” facts.
This is an infuriating ‘revelation’. They are vile empathy free creatures, wildfires, droughts, vanishing coastlines, storms, and the misery dealt by them upon us and our grandchildren are irrelevancies. Votes matter, getting elected matters, human suffering doesn’t.
We’re always bashing Republicans for trying to win elections by disenfranchising voters instead of trying to win them over with better ideas. So I’d give them a lot of credit if they actually engaged on this issue and tried to introduce actual ideas for addressing it. It’s a big improvement over denying that it’s even a problem.
Of course, they have a long way to go toward earning even the slightest benefit of the doubt, and the fact they’re meeting in secret does little to encourage me.
Republicans have cost themselves dearly by defining as “conservative” things that aren’t, or didn’t need to be, “conservative” in the first place.
There’s nothing inherently non-conservative about taking climate change seriously. It should be something both parties can agree on, just like they can “agree” gravity exists or that the Earth is round. There shouldn’t have been anything politically left-right about it.
Topics like LGBT, abortion, religion, affirmative action? Sure, there can be a debate along political lines about that. But climate change is a purely scientific thing.
The oil and coal industries, and their workers, might beg to differ.
If your business model is built on a technology that is long-term deadly to the planet the obvious option is to deny and deflect the evidence, and to bribe your politicians to do the same. If your union membership will undergo serious disruption due to seriously reduced dependence on their product, the obvious option is to complain about unemployment, and to threaten your politicians with loss of votes. If new, less deadly energy-production industries may cost some money to get started, even though the future promise of jobs and revenue is very real, the obvious option is to decry that as spendthrift liberal waste.
These strategies, to me, have “conservative” written all over them.
And if the Democrats indicate they have a good idea worth pursuing, if the red base starts to belly-ache about it based on Faux News ginning-up some imaginary threat, they will quickly back away (see “Public Option” component of the ACA).
). They just want to be elected so they (1) can go on…um, being elected and (2) stop whatever the Democrats want to do. <shrug> ‘Cause they can get rich without having to work at real jobs? I got nuttin’ here.