links for 2009-10-21
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The amazing part is that pundit Chris Cillizza makes that claim today after detailing how the GOP just got slaughtered in the latest WashPost survey: [emphasis added]: "And, perhaps most troubling for GOP hopes is the fact that just 20 percent of the Post sample identified themselves as Republicans, the lowest that number has been in Post polling since 1983. (No, that is not a typo.)" I noted earlier today how the dismal GOP poll results do not fit in with the preferred Beltway narrative. And sure enough, Cillizza seemed to do his best to assure Republicans that the news wasn't that bad: "That's not to say that 2009 hasn't been a good year for Republicans. By and large, it has been." Imagine what the those poll results would have looked like if the GOP had had a bad year?
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What I think is remarkable is the extent to which people on the right, in their zeal to avoid a market mechanism that the business establishment happens to hate, have a tendency to talk up what instead amounts to a kind of Five Year Plan approach. Instead of regulating carbon, let’s just direct scientists of invent miracle trees! Let’s turn the sky red! The greenhouse gas problem is one of the largest political crises the liberal/democratic/capitalist order has ever faced, but unlike something like Hitler the basic shape of the problem is something we’ve seen and dealt with before. The whole “sometimes there are negative externalities and you need to charge people for them” thing is in basic textbooks. Maybe the result of such a scheme will be a technological miracle, or maybe not but the shape of the policy environment that will let us find out isn’t mysterious.
