How can America's Most Ubiquitous Conservative Public Intellectual possibly explain how his Republican Party's position on climate change went from this --
-- to this --
-- in just ten years?
Was it perhaps due to the concerted effort and billions of dollars spent by the moguls of oil and coal to set up a vast web of climate denial front groups and think tanks? To buy political campaigns? To underwrite right wing hacks on radio and teevee?
Of course not. It was all Al Gore's fault!
From The NewsHour (with emphasis added):
DAVID BROOKS: Climate change, in the way it wasn’t 20 years ago, it’s a total partisan issue now.
MILES O’BRIEN: Is that because Al Gore ran for… That’s the moment, isn’t it? Yes.
DAVID BROOKS: I happen to think he had some positive effects with the movement. I think he had a very negative effect. You used to have John McCain and a lot of Republicans with climate change legislation.
MILES O’BRIEN: Right.
DAVID BROOKS: And once it became a Democratic issue, the Republicans had to go on the other side. And there was perverse effect of what Al Gore did.
And there it is. An excuse so casually ridiculous that you wouldn't buy it from a four-year-old -- Republicans can't help being evil because Democrats keep trying to do good -- being proffered by on national teevee Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times.
Crossposted from a longer post at Driftglass
