Tag: House Minority Leader

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No-Study Politics

The 200-plus “youth activists” who stormed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s offices (see yesterday’s Common Sense) were protesting Pelosi’s leadership on climate issues. Soon-to-be Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was there to encourage Pelosi to listen to them.

“We need a Green New Deal,” Ocasio-Cortez informed her natural constituency, journalists, “and we need to get to 100 percent renewables because our lives depend on it.”

An impossible task, of course. Which means activists would always possess a reason to protest — forever and ever without end.

Still, Ocasio-Cortez and her friends seem earnest. The Representative-Elect insists “we have 10 years left and I — not just as an elected member, but as a 29-year-old woman — am thinking not just about what we are going to accomplish in the next two years but the America that we’re going to live in in the next 30 years.”

A little skepticism is in order. Prophecies to the effect that we have only “ten or 12 years left” after which “global warming will be irreversible” are made repeatedly . . . every ten years or so. Rinse. 

“I think in 2018, when fires, floods, storms are getting worse,” another Pelosi protester reiterated, “and when the U.N. climate report says we have 12 years to radically transform our entire economy at a scale that’s unprecedented in human history, I think studying climate change is absolutely the wrong thing to do.”

What pearls of wisdom to conclude the coverage. Of course “studying climate change is absolutely the wrong thing to do” to “fix” climate change! Who needs information?

To fight climate change . . . or  “radically transform our entire economy.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Strange Money

House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, U.S. Senator, Luther Strange, Washington, establishment

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sure is popular . . . in Washington.

Elsewhere? Well . . .

In Alabama, a Republican runoff on the 26th pits controversial Judge Roy Moore, who gained national attention fighting to keep a Ten Commandments monument on court grounds, against U.S. Senator Luther Strange, appointed to the office by Governor Robert Bentley.*

The third place finisher was U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, who, while complimenting Judge Moore for running “a very honest campaign,” has declined to endorse either candidate. As for Strange, Brooks offered: “I want to congratulate the people who were behind him: Mitch McConnell, the Washington establishment, the K street lobbyists. They put together some very tough ads . . .”

McConnell has poured nearly $7 million from the Senate Leadership Fund into Strange’s campaign, giving the incumbent what the Birmingham News called “a staggering financial edge over Moore.”

And yet the paper’s report also noted that this “money advantage has not translated so far into votes.” A recent poll shows Judge Moore with a double-digit lead over Sen. Strange — 52 to 36 percent.

President Trump has also endorsed Strange, which with Trump’s popularity there is likely to help. Meanwhile, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows endorsed Moore, warning that McConnell, a fellow Republican, would flood the state with “millions of dollars in false advertising.”

GOP advertising in Georgia’s June special election bypassed the Democrat running to instead make Democrat House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi the face of opposition Democrats. It seemed to work.

Similarly, Roy Moore’s campaign may very well ignore Strange to make Sen. Mitch McConnell the face of the opposition Washington establishment.

Possible slogan: “The Washington establishment’s choice is Strange.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The governor was, at the time of the appointment, under investigation by Strange, then Alabama’s Attorney General.

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