It’s a little long for my taste, but given that only 24 percent even know that cap and trade is environmental legislation, Republicans have some explaining to do if they want to build any real resistance to the measure. Add to that the fact that video of Democrats admitting electricity rates will “skyrocket” under cap and trade is about as common as footage of bigfoot, and this is pretty good work from the whip’s office. It’s not clear Pelosi has the votes to get the thing out of the House despite a compromise with Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, but Gore was supposed to come in and twist arms today before Friday’s vote and cancelled at the last minute — reportedy because his services were not longer needed. So maybe she does have the votes — and I’m starting to hope that she does. If this passes the House, one of two things happens. One possibility is the Senate does nothing, in which case Nancy will have hung the entire Blue Dog caucus and a bunch of other moderates out to dry by forcing them to take a tough vote on cap and trade for nothing. Republicans will be able to hammer these guys in 2010 for voting against the interests of their own constiitiuents for some pie-in-the-sky environmental program that even a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate wouldn’t touch with a ten foot poll. Alternatively, the Senate does pass cap and trade and saddles Americans with the most complex tax scheme in the history of the world. Their energy bills go up — “skyrocket” in Obama’s words — while the economy is still in the toilet. The left is out there claiming that this legislation will cost Americans the equivalent of one postage stamp a day. Good luck with that. The whole point of cap and trade is to obscure the costs, and Republicans will be telling voters that half their electric bill is a feel-good tax imposed by tree-hugging Democrats. Basically, cap and trade strikes me as the Iraq war of the Democratic domestic policy agenda. It’s the overreach moment. It’s a massive program that, unlike health care reform, no one is demanding, no one understands, and no one can explain. Cap and trade may be the only thing that can save the Republican party from eight years in the wilderness.
