Republican strategist Karl Rove, who helped organize the outside groups that spent millions to install Republicans in the midterm elections, spent election day celebrating with Pennsylvania’s growing drilling industry. Like other corporate sectors, the fossil industry is hoping that Republicans will be able to roll back regulations that limit their profit-seeking at the expense of people’s health and safety. Rove told the attendees of a shale-gas conference in Philadelphia that the incoming Republican House of Representatives “sure as heck” won’t pass legislation to limit greenhouse pollution from fossil fuels:

“Climate is gone,” said Rove, the keynote speaker on the opening day of a two-day shale-gas conference sponsored by Hart Energy Publishing L.L.P. And Rove told the trade show, “I don’t think you need to worry” the new Congress will consider proposed legislation to put the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing under federal rather than state regulation. The procedure, known as “fracking,” is responsible for the dramatic growth of shale-gas drilling in formations such as Pennsylvania’s vast Marcellus Shale.

Rove’s pronouncement that the “climate is gone” may be more accurate than he realizes. The Geological Society of London is warning that the planet will take 100,000 years to recover from man’s global warming pollution, the permanently warmer Arctic is altering weather patterns across the Northern Hemisphere, and scientists continue to warn that global policy ambitions — if the United States even acted — are likely too weak to avoid catastrophe.

As ThinkProgress has repeatedly noted, despite their professed commitment to cut government spending, most Republicans in Congress refuse to propose specifics that would actually cut spending in any significant way. Recognizing the extreme unpopularity of cutting Social Security and Medicare, and the aversion of their base to military cuts, these self-styled fiscal conservatives often take entitlement and defense spending off the table, removing nearly 60 percent of the federal budget from scrutiny. Of the remaining spending, another sizable portion goes to debt payments — which are untouchable — and most Republicans also take homeland security and other security spending off the table, leaving only a small fraction of the total federal budget from which to find cuts.

Despite this stark reality, Republicans still try to claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility, and are forced to fumble, hem and haw when pressed on how they would actually cut spending. But at least one Republican leader is willing to be honest. Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) essentially called his party’s congressional leaders liars, saying anybody says they want to cut spending but won’t touch entitlements or defesne is “lying to you”:

HOST: What are you going to cut?

PAWLENTY: If you look at a pie chart of federal outlays, discretionary spending being the red, non-discretionary being the blue. The blue is already over the over the half way mark and it’s growing in double digits. Anybody who comes in here and tells you they’re not going to cut anything other than waste fraud and abuse, they’re not going to touch entitlements — they’re lying to you. If you want to deal with the spending issue, in terms of total federal outlays, you got to deal with interest on the national debt, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — if you have the time I can walk you through my ideas. But that’s the truth, you got to do entitlement reform, particularly if you’re going to hold defense harmless.

Watch it:

Pawlenty called out this “lying” because he openly favors cuts to entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. This is an unpopular position, so Republican congressional leaders often attempt to claim that no one in their ranks wants to cut these programs. However, this is patently false; ThinkProgress has identified 104 Republicans in Congress who support privatizing Social Security. Progressives have alternatively proposed defense spending cuts, eliminating corporate welfare elimination, and responsible revenue increases.

If these congressional Republicans are serious about cutting spending and want to make cuts to Social Securiy or Medicare, they should have the courage to say so honestly, as Pawlenty seems to be calling on them to do, instead of hiding behind phony claims that they can make meaningful cuts without causing significant pain.

In Nov. 2008, President Obama’s election “unleashed a renewed love for the United States after years of dwindling goodwill” — generating overwhelmingly positive responses from around the globe. UK Conservative Party Leader David Cameron, now the country’s Prime Minister, said at the time that Obama’s election “shows that the United States is a beacon of hope and opportunity and change.”

Last night on Fox News, Newt Gingrich tried to advance the illusion that the world has reacted similarly to the GOP’s strong showing in Tuesday’s midterms:

GINGRICH: I mean, imagine if you were in China as a dictatorship and you watched the American people cheerfully firing people, and you thought to yourself, Wow, that’s a pretty cool idea. Or imagine you were an Iranian student thinking, you know, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to fire Ahmadinejad, the way Americans go about their politics? So I think it actually strengthens us.

The other is, I think this was a real signal to the world not to assume that the United States is a weak, timid country, not to assume that we’re going to tolerate bad economic policies and not to assume that we’re a country you’re going to be able to push around or run over because I think the American people are exhibiting a robust willingness to change the entire game. And that’s a pretty good historic reminder to other countries that we are a remarkably powerful, and if necessary, remarkably dangerous country when people try to behave in a predatory way towards us.

Watch it:

However, this reception Gingrich speaks of only exists in his mind. In fact, the world is worried that the U.S. will actually be tolerating bad economic policies such as wanting to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich, as the New York Times reports today:

“The rest of the world, including Asia, is looking at the United States and seeing no real effective policy measures in bringing the economy back on track,” said Bart van Ark, the chief economist at the Conference Board, which measures American economic indicators. “That is making the U.S. lose its legitimacy in the global economic community as a leader in terms of providing solutions.” [...]

“Republican claims to fiscal probity are a little difficult to buy into,” said Simon Tilford, the chief economist at the Center for European Reform in London. “What they’re advocating would probably increase the deficit rather than effect the dramatic reduction which they claim they want to bring about.”

Benedict Brogan, deputy editor of the right of center Daily Telegraph in London said “you will find folk in Downing Street who fear mainstream Republicans are on the wrong economic path.”

As the AP reported, “China’s interest in the elections was high,” but not because the Chinese want to be like the U.S., as Gingrich said, but because of worries “about the election’s fallout on the U.S.-China relationship, which has been marked by tensions over trade and currency.”

And Iranians probably don’t heed American election results as an impetus to remove Ahmadinejad from office — as last year’s disputed election protests in Iran clearly demonstrated. A Tehran University professor of North American studies said that Iranians view the U.S. midterms and are actually more concerned about “easing tensions” between Iran and the U.S., something the new GOP House majority will be fighting against.