It’s Hot. Blame Republicans

It probably doesn’t do much to advance Democratic political prospects when its members assign godlike powers approaching omnipotence to the GOP. But that is the tactic some on the left have adopted in the effort to promote anxiety around climate change.

“Hot enough for you?” Hillary Clinton asked last week. “Thank a MAGA Republican. Or better yet, vote them out of office.”

Neither Clinton nor the Center for American Progress, whose agitation prompted the former Democratic presidential candidate to attribute superhuman powers to the GOP, explained precisely how voting against Republican office seekers would make it cooler outside. Fortunately, the mainstream press rode to the Democrats’ rescue. Again.

“Deadly heatwaves are baking the U.S.,” CNN reported on Saturday. “Scientists just reported that July will be the hottest month on record.” And yet, “the GOP is stuck in a climate bind.” You see, the party’s policy preferences literally do not change with the weather, and that’s a problem. “With a few exceptions, Republicans largely are no longer the party of full-on climate change denial,” CNN’s Ella Nilsen continued. “But even as temperatures rise to deadly highs, the GOP is also not actively addressing it.”

Bloomberg’s Ari Natter expressed similar frustrations last week. Sure, it’s hot, he lamented, “But that’s not motivating Republicans in Congress to want to do much about it,” Natter wrote.

He singled out Senator John Cornyn, who responded wryly when asked for a “comment about hot weather in the summer.” He noted that it seems like just yesterday that the activist consensus was that “climate isn’t the same thing as the weather,” and he’s right — it was the consensus, at least, when it’s cold.

It’s not just Cornyn who is to blame for the rising mercury. “Some of Capitol Hill’s top Republicans said they are unmoved by recent weather to take a more aggressive stance on global warming,” Natter added. “No Republicans voted for Democrats’ landmark climate law,” the Bloomberg reporter admitted of a bill that was passed under the fraudulent auspices of “inflation reduction.” He concluded by forecasting political pain. “Inaction could present political peril for Republicans as floods, wildfires and heat waves affect more Americans,” read the hope Natter retailed as analysis.

Despite the summer heat, the Guardian’s Dharna Noor marveled, Republicans on the Senate Commerce Committee dared to “circulate a memo attacking climate measures in Biden’s proposed 2024 budget.” The absolute knaves. Republicans oppose Joe Biden’s mandate on the Pentagon to retire the internal combustion engine for all noncombat vehicles and reject the administration’s efforts to draft NASA into the business of climate activism — even despite the fact that it’s very hot outside. In this way, the League of Conservation Voters advocate David Shadburn says, it’s the GOP that is showing “how unserious they are” about “the climate crisis.” Yes, Republicans are the unserious ones.

This is activism masquerading as journalism, but the crisis is now so acute that journalistic conventions like objectivity must be discarded. We “absolutely should politicize the weather,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman declared on July 17. In “a more rational” political environment, the “environmental extremism of the Republican Party” would be “the biggest election issue of them all.” This is a challenge to be overcome, and overcoming it involves dispensing with all subtlety and bludgeoning voters with the most vulgar activist diatribes the press can muster.

On reflection, the press did not, in fact, fill in the blanks for Hillary Clinton. That was too heavy a lift. All they did was to strike the “global” part from “global warming” in a rote, unconvincing assault on the GOP’s failure to mimic Democrats’ nervous energy and roll over for their policy goals. In the process, they’ve anthropomorphized the weather and appealed to the demanding deities in the GOP for relief. Who says the Democrats are the party of secularity?