A war is brewing among the right wing over the chairmanship of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over health care, climate policy, and energy policy. Brad Johnson has the story in this TP cross-post.
Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) is the leading contender, but Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is seeking a waiver from Republican leadership to retake the gavel, while Reps. John Shimkus (R-IL) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) are also in the hunt. Although the candidates are lockstep in opposition to the Obama agenda and in their intention to launch witch hunts against climate science, Upton is a relative moderate, having admitted in the past that greenhouse emissions should be reduced. In contrast, Barton “” who famously apologized to BP this summer “” is fully aligned with the oil and gas industry, with $1,482,630 in lifetime contributions.
Now this internal fight has exploded into a Tea Party battle royale. FreedomWorks, run by veteran GOP lobbyist Dick Armey, has launched Down With Upton, a website attacking “Big Government Republican Fred Upton” for a record “full of votes for more regulation, more spending, and more taxes.” In an email announcing the campaign, FreedomWorks cited Glenn Beck’s warning that “light bulbs are just the beginning”:
Fred Upton, currently considered the front-runner for chairmanship of the critical House Energy and Commerce committee, is far out of step with the Tea Party movement, the GOP and the American people as a whole. You may have heard Glenn Beck talking about Fred Upton introducing a bill to ban incandescent light bulbs in favor of so-called “environmentally-friendly” alternatives. The truth is, Fred Upton has a Big Government record a mile long, and light bulbs are just the beginning.
Upton has already reneged his position on light-bulb efficiency, telling Politico “he’s not afraid to go back after an issue he once supported but that has come under withering assault on the conservative airwaves, including on Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck’s talk shows.”
There was, in fact, no bill to ban incandescent light bulbs. Because of the advanced light-bulb standards Upton helped pass in 2007, “the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation,” the New York Times reported last year. “There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”
The Tea Party movement is increasingly attacking American innovation and 21st-century jobs on all fronts: Rush Limbaugh is leading the charge against the breakthrough Chevy Volt, Republican governors are killing high-speed rail, Glenn Beck is cooking up conspiracy theories about smart grid technology, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is trying to kill the wind industry, and the entire right-wing movement is convinced green jobs are going to destroy the United States economy.
– Brad Johnson
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Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
But then, the conservatives do not want to create any jobs for voters.
Less jobs = less voters for the incumbent.
Bad economy = winning opposition.
Exactly, Flin. I do not think there is any issue they won’t seek to turn into votes for their side. Witness Jon Kyl’s blocking the new START treaty for the next round of nuclear weapons reductions — and more importantly, inspections.
…typo – Shimkus is not an Indiana rep; that ought to be R-IL.
They seem to have only one policy. get rid of the government, except where it helps their sponsors.
What’s next? Banning insulation retrofits, so we can burn more coal and oil?
These guys are not out of control, actually. They are goosestepping to the instructions of the coal and oil companies. Jefferson and Madison could not have predicted this. We need to think of a way to stop them, starting with drastic efforts to educate the public outside normal corporate controlled media outlets.
Now they have machines and outsourcing, they don’t need poor people (except their unborn fetuses, those are sacrosanct). Billionaires are looting the world’s treasuries and don’t want no stinkin’ interference.
But a little quibble – does clicking on the Down with Upton button actually work? Might be a bad idea …
Silly people, don’t realize the new bulbs are a lot cheaper in the long run, and are now more pleasant lighting as well.
It’s time to start calling these clowns for what they really are: Un-American. That’s right, they are un-American. Let’s make that talking point loud and clear. Rush is railing against the Volt? A car designed and manufactured in America by Americans and he is against it?
Don’t let the fringe right have a monopoly on patriotism, let’s take our country back! (To steal a phrase)
Oh gosh .. in a more perfect world, Our President would call Congress into session, tell them to fix it all in 90 days, then meet with the Joint Chiefs about how they will run things when they don’t. Because clearly this is not working.
But that will not happen soon, but it may happen later. This is the slide down hill for our civilization and our nation….and it is lock-step in sync with the destabilization of climate and heating. That is why deniers are so irrationally strident, they know their power and wealth is based upon a crumbling instability…. it is easy for them to pander, because nobody wants to see the changes that are inevitable.
“Buggy whips are just the beginning!”
The CONSERVATIVES in Australia introduced regulations that insisted that only high efficiency bulbs could be sold years ago. Since then the cost of high efficiency bulbs has plummeted and the quality of light improved dramatically.
What happened to the old saying that ended something like”..If you aren’t a Republican supporter by the time you are forty you haven’t got a brain.”? Anyone with a brain would look at what was done in Australia.
Darth, no let’s take our country foward!
Apparently climate change denial wasn’t enough because progressives could still encourage energy efficiency and clean energy and big oil/big coal didn’t like that. So the conservative drones now oppose any form of clean energy as socialist, big government, job killing, evil, etc. Take your pick. The right’s new response to any new strategy of progressives is to just shift further right. And it’s working, unfortunately.
Clearly, anything that reduces our need for oil, coal, and natural gas is unacceptable. Anything that reduces our dependency on China for everything is unacceptable. Anything that helps our energy independence except drilling and poisoning the ground water is unacceptable. Surely, these people you write about are not real people, but caricatures. Bipartisanship with these monsters? I think not.
Message to Obama and anyone who would take these people even somewhat seriously. Wake up and grow a pair.
Hmm, if Obama promoted a massive conversion of residential homes from heating oil to say, ground-source heat pumps what would they do; oppose drilling? Oppose energy savings, cost savings and installation jobs? Run commercials showing the poor, victimized, oil truck drivers?
Is anybody going to tell them that to truly mitigate climate change we need a negative-carbon economy?