On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that Republicans have shifted their position on climate legislation in part because they’re more pro-manufacturing than they were before but they’ve taken an “extreme position” on the issue.
Brooks said, “I’m old enough to go back to John McCain and Lindsey Graham 20 years ago, who supported — who proposed a big climate change bill. Back then, you had Republicans and Democrats both with climate change proposals. Back then, there was about a 20-point gap between Democratic views of climate change and Republican. Now, it’s a 50-point gap. And so, why is that? Well, one, everything’s more polarized. Two, Republicans are more manufacturing than they used to be. And, three, and I think most important, it’s just become a sign of political machismo that whatever polite opinion — if polite opinion says A, then we say Z. And so, drill, baby drill, is a way to offend the elites.”
He continued, “And the weird thing is, that, if you look at a bunch of other numbers — and I looked at some Pew data — three-quarters of Americans support global climate change treaties, 69% think we should be carbon-neutral, 66% support government subsidies for wind and solar. So, the Republicans who have taken this extreme position are not only, in my view, going against the science. They’re going against pretty large majorities on a bunch of these sub-issues.”
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