I swear to God I am not making this up. The New York Times ran an editorial yesterday arguing that the EPA’s proposals to regulate carbon dioxide emissions cannot reasonably be characterized as the borderline-illegal efforts of a rogue agency, because those proposals originated during the Bush administration.
Or something like that. At least they’re saying that House Republicans cannot without hypocrisy so criticize the EPA, presumably because all Republicans are required by the Times hypocrisy police to endorse all policies of all past Republican administrations. I wonder if the Times plans to level the same charges against the 26 House Republicans who voted last week against the extension of the Patriot Act.
Oh. Guess not.
The editorial says that “under President George W. Bush, the E.P.A. argued”. Normally, I would read that to mean that the EPA took a public policy position with the approval of Pres. Bush. But as I understand it, that did not happen at all. An EPA administrator wrote a letter saying that a policy position was required by a court opinion, but Bush was not persuaded.
Well, to give them some credit, they are not arguing that the EPA’s proposals cannot reasonably be characterized as the borderline-illegal efforts of a rogue agency. They are only saying that it is not a *principled* position for House republicans to say this. This is because President Bush’s EPA administrator also thought the same as the current one.
I agree that this seems a nonesensical proposition. Presumably these same House republicans would have felt just the same if Bush had responded appropriately by following the advice of his appointed expert, and complied with the Supreme Court’s ruling. As it is, Bush apparently just ignored the letter, so the issue was never tested.
However, it does lend weight to the view that the EPA is correct in its assesment that action needs to be taken to comply with the law. Two different EPA administrators under very different administrations have come to the same conclusion. I am quite sure that Johnson did not expect that Bush would have welcomed his assesment.
You had me at “The New York Times” …
The Fallacy is that all Republicans are the same and have the same opinions.
If the Bush EPA had levied these regulations or other comparable regulations and the Republicans who are so vociferous now had found better things to do then complain, that would be hypocrisy, but that’s not really what happened.
What happened is that some Republicans are extremely sympathetic to arguments that Global Climate Change is a problem that needs to be addressed, and some aren’t. On that note, is there really anyone who wouldn’t in a 2 option world trade a comprehensive carbon tax for an elimination of the Capital Gains tax? Other than Oil and Coal companies that is.
Of course all Republicans are not required to endorse all policies of all past Republican administrations.
They just require themselves repeat the daily/weekly Republican talking points. If the daily/weekly talking point is that someone in the Bush administration did something wrong, of course they will all speak out about it
At the same time
With the same words and phrases
@ math_geek:
Not that being extremely sympathetic to Global Climate Change is necessarily a good or bad thing, but the following statement doesn’t ring true to me.
“some Republicans are extremely sympathetic to arguments that Global Climate Change is a problem that needs to be addressed”
Of the ~24 Republican senators elected in 2010, can you let me know of 4 that are extremely sympathetic to Global Climate Change based on their recent statements/campaign ads?
Yup, makes sense to me. We also know the democrats support slavery, because Lincoln was a Republican. Screw both of them, Bull Moose Party all the way!
Wait you swear to God? So does that mean you are making it up then?
@ Super-Fly:
There is actually more truth than sarcasm in your statement.
Southerners voted for Southern Democrats because Lincoln was a Republican.
Once the Kennedy and Johnson were seen as getting rid of segregation, southerns voted for Republicans because Kennedy and Johnson were democrats.
Brilliant.