Global warming legislation came back to life this week like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster lurching from the operating table.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi opted to reanimate the stitched-together brute that makes angry mobs of both environmentalists and capitalists and did so by making the bill even less attractive to both groups.
Part of the reason was to get the cap-and-trade proposal out of the way before the big battle for health care, but it’s also part of a new “get tough” approach coming from the White House and the speaker’s office.
Last week was dismal for the Democrats.
Polls showed the public is quickly losing faith in the idea of a stimulus and bailout economy financed through the largest deficits since World War II. On the heels of that news came stratospheric cost estimates for a national health plan and frank admissions from Democrats that the votes just weren’t there to pass it.
The mini-malaise was deepened by President Barack Obama’s struggle to find his own feelings about the crackdown in Iran. Even those in the press who are still swooning had to say that the honeymoon was over.
So the president deployed his preferred weapon: the press conference.
It will likely be pretty effective in dealing with the reporters who realize Obama overpromises and underdelivers. Acting peevish, slapping down even pliant questioners and then shaming the whole media establishment with a planted question and some serious stroking for the Huffington Post will be enough to remind most of the reporters who their meal ticket is.
As the network bosses are planning their next cross-promotion for a Obama television special, reporters talking about the high-flying president falling to Earth might not fare well in the next round of layoffs.
Being in the tank for the administration is providing some ratings and readership relief for the establishment media, and its also part of what’s killing it. But the Obama junkies in big media can’t kick the habit.
Part of what the president wanted to talk about was the new hope for his global warming plan.
At the end of last week, most folks on Capitol Hill were confident that the bill was as good as dead. The speaker had allowed the legislation to founder in committees where it would be amended to death.
But on Monday, Pelosi took extraordinary measures to get past the blockade thrown up by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn. To win support from Peterson and other farm-state Democrats, Pelosi had to OK new subsidies and agree to strip out the portions of the bill that recognize the wasteful and carbon-creating nature of ethanol.
Environmentalists now recognize the bill is a joke and the other lobbyists quickly got to work looking for a better deal for their clients. It’s a fire sale on global warming and no offer will be refused.
The speaker believes she can force her monstrosity through on Friday with the 218 Democrats who are either cynically looking to help their patrons or so committed to the global warming cause that they will accept even a bill this rotten for the sake of having the law on the books to reform later.
But she also knows that it won’t make the leap over to the Senate, where two separate bills — one on climate and another on energy — are making their way along.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has lower approval numbers than his fellow Nevada senator who just admitted to sleeping with a staffer’s wife. Reid is not likely to jam through a climate bill that will amount to a huge new tax on middle class voters in his state before the 2010 elections.
Pelosi doesn’t have to worry about such things representing San Francisco, but her sudden about-face on the global warming bill wasn’t really about cap-and-trade. It was about avoiding perception of passivity.
The move, likely coordinated with the White House, was to try to get Democrats back on the offensive. With health care looking sickly and the president equivocating on Iran, getting shut out on global warming fees fed the notion that Obama’s ambitious agenda was petering out. Plus it deprived Democrats of a bargaining chip with big business.
But in advancing such a compromised bill, Pelosi shows weakness, not strength.
