Before BP’s oil spill disaster, right-wing lawmakers constantly outperformed each other in a battle to be the most anti-government zealot when it came to energy policy. For instance, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) claimed that energy efficiency standards would set up a “global warming Gestapo” and attacked the administration’s czars who have unbridled powers.” Now, as his state is “in a war” with a black tide of oil, Scalise is complaining the federal government hasn’t done enough to deal with the spill, and has attacked President Obama for not coming in and “tak[ing] over.”

On Wednesday, ThinkProgress spoke with Scalise about his change in rhetoric, and asked if BP’s spill has changed his perception of the role of government. Scalise saw no cognitive dissonance in likening proactive government policies to Nazi Germany, while complaining that not enough government action is a lack of “leadership.” Scalise instead said merely that everyone wants “competent government”:

TP: You criticized the federal government for, you know, not doing enough given the spill in the gulf. But just a couple of months ago, you were saying that the EPA bureaucrats are like the Gestapo. Has the spill changed your perception of the role of government?

SCALISE: Well what it shows is that you’ve got incompetent government right now. MMS, who is the federal regulator, has not been doing their job. What we’re asking is, whether you’re for bigger government or smaller government, we ought to be able to expect competent government. And unfortunately we haven’t gotten that. People need to do their jobs.

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One might question whether Scalise himself — who believes the “Climategate” conspiracy theory about the world’s scientific community, and voted against the stimulus but touted the jobs it created in his district — meets the standard of “competent government.”

Scalise is hardly the only anti-government critic now demanding government action in the wake of BP’s spill. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) warned her constituents that living in D.C. placed her “behind enemy lines,” and that people should get “armed and dangerous” to prepare for clean energy policies. But now, Bachmann is ranting that the government didn’t do enough, and that Obama should have “commandeered” boats to deal with BP’s crisis. In March, Sarah Palin decried Obama’s “transformation of America into some kind of socialized country.” Now she wants a government that “regulates oil developments and holds oil executives accountable” and federal criminal investigations to end “oily corruption.”

Invoking a Nazi reference today, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) argued that establishing national energy efficiency standards for buildings would create a “global warming Gestapo.” Scalise attacked the provision in the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (HR 2454) to create a federal building efficiency code (Section 201), calling it “ludicrous”:

Let’s go to the bill and look at the penalties. Because there are actually civil penalties in this bill. We’re actually creating a global warming police. . . And then further to page 236: “Each day of unlawful occupancy shall be considered a separate violation.” We’re setting up a global warming Gestapo that can literally come in and now this new term, “unlawful occupancy.” Now living in your home is considered unlawful under this bill.

This is ludicrous.

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Putting aside Scalise’s inflammatory rhetoric, his understanding of the provision — which would save working families and businesses millions of dollars, create hundreds of thousands of green jobs, and tackle the nation’s biggest source of global warming pollution — is flawed. Scalise ignored the difference between energy efficiency building codes and safety codes. Scalise was also seemly ignorant that the legislation explicitly preserves local building codes that meet or exceed the national standard, while providing federal support for states to implement new standards. Federal enforcement would only take place if states failed to act.

Without irony, Scalise argued that fighting global warming would threaten the health and safety of Lousianans in danger of “hurricanes and flooding” and tornadoes:

Safety and health have always been the main driving factors behind a building code. What this bill does in Section 201, it’s literally taking global warming, and using global warming to trump safety and health. Because now, if I’m in South Louisiana, and I want to rebuild after hurricane damage — which by the way we had 120,000 homes in Louisiana that had more than 50 percent damage due to Hurricane Katrina — under this bill in section 201, when people are rebuilding those 120,000 homes, they would have to follow the federal building code, and in many cases that would mean they can’t use the same types of strength that they might want to use in their windows. They might want to use stronger windows because they don’t want the storm to blow out their windows. But under this bill, a federal standard could say their windows are out of the federal code.

Global warming likely significantly intensified the devastating power of Hurricane Katrina. As the state of Louisana itself has explained, “Coastal Lousiana is more vulnerable to the effects of global climate change than any other region in the United States. Its low elevation, high rate of subsidence and rapid loss of wetlands expose this area to the worst consequences of climatic change — a rising Gulf, possibly stronger storms, unpredictable rainfall and warmer weather.”

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