Embracing The Ignorance

Count on the 2012 Republican presidential nominee to have flip-flopped on being a birther, on fiscal responsibility, and to have abandoned global warming.  The current crop of hopefuls are lining up their bona fides by taking the ignorant GOP mob's position on all three subjects to embrace the stupid.  Today's example:  the story of how T-Paw threw Minnesota environmentalists into the lake.

When Will Steger was 15 years old, he and his brother piloted an old motorboat down the Mississippi River from Minnesota to New Orleans. At 17, he journeyed to the Arctic. At 41, he became the first man in history to travel unsupported to the North Pole and come back alive. He's traveled across Antarctica by sled (another first), hopped freights, and found his purpose at a mountain monastery.

But there's just one challenge the Arctic explorer couldn't complete: Keeping Tim Pawlenty honest on global warming.

After working closely with Steger for two years to combat climate change, the former Minnesota governor and current GOP presidential contender abruptly reversed himself on the issue in 2008, just as his name was being floated as a possible presidential running mate for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Steger and Pawlenty haven't spoken since. Today, the politician who once cut a radio ad with Janet Napolitano calling for a federal cap on greenhouse gas emissions calls his work on climate change "stupid" and says the science is uncertain at best.

"I'm baffled by that—did he actually say that?" says Steger, when asked about Pawlenty's recent statements. "I'm baffled by that. But I think he's getting information from the wrong source and it's really too bad for our children. It's reckless."

Steger should have known better than to trust a Republican as an "environmental moderate".   No such creature exists, having been hunted to extinction in the 2008 and 2010 primaries.

Like Mitt Romney's effort to reform Massachusetts' health care system, Pawlenty's global warming initiative is now anathema to the GOP base. With Steger's support, Pawlenty signed into law a bill that would force the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. But that won't do him much good in the GOP primary: According to a recent survey, only 29 percent of Republicans believe man-made global warming is happening.

"It's misguided; I made the mistake," Pawlenty said on Laura Ingraham's radio show last week, addressing his past support for climate change legislation. "The question is, once you made a mistake, do you recognize it? Do you admit it? Are you willing to come forward? Are you a big enough person to say it was the wrong thing to do?"

It's a mistake now.  It's politically inconvenient.  The damage has already been done.

If you're magically expecting a moderate Republican to ride to the party's rescue in 2012, I have news for you.  Won't happen.  The person who does win the nomination will have one job:  to ensure that the last 80 years of civil rights, social rights, and economic rights since the New Deal are reversed, and that America becomes a corporate state in truth as well as in name.

Only the anti-science, anti-environment, anti-women, anti-minority, anti-worker ignorance will survive the GOP primary.  The 2012 nominee will be a complete nutjob.  Count on it.