Christie On Global Warming: I Think We Need More Science

There's a dumb site called Conservative In New Jersey that's claiming Christie is a liberal on a host of issues. I see it cited from time to time.

I want to talk about how stupid it is.

Now, on a couple of issues, I know Christie has taken a position I don't like. I already know about three -- he didn't sign on to the ObamaCare lawsuit (he claims he wanted to spare NJ taxpayers the cost of it and just free-ride the benefits, which is a b.s. answer, but it's b.s. in the right direction), he gave a vague answer on the Ground Zero Mosque, and he's said he didn't like Arizona's border control law.

Fine. But we do we need to make up crap? Here's Christie's answer when asked about global warming, which "Conservative in New Jersey" finds fault with:

Asked by a man attending the event whether he thought mankind was responsible for global warming, Christie says he’s seen evidence on both sides of the argument but thinks it hasn’t been proven one way or another.

Christie says “more science” is needed to convince him.

What? That is a good answer. That is the right answer, really, politically. Well, the real right answer is closer to James Inhofe's -- it ain't real -- but saying you're not convinced?

That's a great solid conservative answer. And, by the way, Sarah Palin said about the same thing, when she was running for public office:

"I will not pretend to have all the answers," Palin said about global warming, according to the Anchorage Daily News. Her spokesman clarified at the time that "she's not totally convinced one way or the other. Science will tell us ... She thinks the jury's still out."

And I loved that answer then. Look, when you're facing down religious zealots who own the media, "I'm just saying, we don't know yet" is a terrific (and solidly conservative) answer.

It's called "reading between the lines." Look into it, Conservative in New Jersey.

Sarah Palin has since then gotten even more right on the issue, but she's also not holding public office any longer, nor, at the moment, running for it, and there is a certain liberating quality in that.

But this guy is even dumber than that. He presents the below video about the RGGI (Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative) that NJ was signed into by former Governor Corzine, a multistate cap & trade scheme. That is, not a national one, just most of the Northeastern hippy-dippy states.

This is what people keep claiming on this site when they claim that Christie "supports cap & trade."

Right, right... you can tell he supports this, by the fact that he... opposes it.

This hack site makes a big deal over the fact that he opposes it for the wrong reasons; that is, this hack site wants Christie to say "global warming is bunk" and oppose RGGI, but instead he says "this scheme reduces our competitiveness and hurts New Jerseyans' job prospects" and then he opposes it.

So he takes a conservative position on RGGI, but instead of offering the most stridently conservative reason for doing so, offers a second-tier conservative reason for doing so, so... he's supports cap & tax, obviously.

So based on that -- that Christie's reason for opposing RGGI isn't the one this hack site prefers -- he claims that Christie is pro cap & trade, and then that gets parroted by the various people with agendas.

He ends his statement by saying he's going to make his own evaluation, when it comes up for renewal, about how "anti-competitive" it is and by how much it "artificially inflates" our costs.

That sounds like he's a "no" on that renewed participation, dude. Not like a "yes." He does not say a single good thing about the program. And I listened, three times. He speaks of it in completely negative terms.

Based on the fact he's going to spike a cap & tax scheme that his idiot predecessor signed the state into, that proves he's pro cap & tax?

Is this the level of bullshit that's typical for this site? Jeeze Louise, I don't think I want to read anything more.

I'll say one odd effect of this idiot site: I was sort of buying, based on all the dumb parroting of the cap & tax line, that he was squishy on greenhouse gases.

Now that I've actually been baited to look over there, I am delightedly surprised he's a stalwart, issuing the same good answer on this topic that was one of the first reasons I started liking Sarah Palin.

In Multi-Front Wars... There's a doctrine, some fronts you fight to win, other fronts you just hold, until you can win on the other ones. You can't fight to win all fronts simultaneously (unless you're fighting with nukes, of course; as the great USS Clueless observed, "Of course the U.S. can fight a ten front war if it needs to; it's just that eight of those fronts will be fought with nuclear weapons").

There are some wars you can't outright win so you just yeah-yeah slow-walk the opposition to death. This is called "winning," as it actually prevents your opponents from getting anywhere.

Yes, I want my Republican candidate to swear how much he loves, loves, loves trees, and how he supports, wholeheartedly, the Clean Air Act (of 1970), and other such stuff.

I like trees myself.

But as they say, the Constitution is not a suicide pact, and neither is conservatism. If one argument works to get to the conservative outcome and another argument probably wouldn't work -- use the one that works.

I'm so tired of the Vindictive Purists. And I call them this because they are not universal purists; they are not pushing a rigorously pure agenda on all candidates. They only push this rigorously pure agenda on candidates they don't like.

So it's a vindictive standard -- thus, Vindictive Purists. Same as when the liberal media employs its Vindictive Civility standard only the right.

A standard is not a standard when it's selectively applied.

posted by Ace at 08:33 PM

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