Oh, how quickly we like to revise history. The biggot[sic] vote? You know who else was anti-gay marriage in 2004? Obama. Hillary. A majority in California. Were all of these people biggots[sic] too?
Yes.
Of course, Obama and Clinton never seemed to be nearly as earnest about it as most of the Republicans... their position was more due to opportunistic political cynicsm than deep, evil conviction and therefore slightly less bad.
Exactly. I would guess that Obama, at least, has been in favor of marriage equality for a while now, but felt it was too politically risky. But yes, publicly, they definitely were bigots.
I don't know if that is supposed to condemn him or defend him. Frankly, I think being against something you think is wrong but not wanting to speak up against it for political expediency is at least as bad as being for that wrong thing. The word "unprincipled" comes to mind.
Yes, political wind testing. It's a shame, but all politicians do it. Like George HW Bush is pro-choice in his beliefs, but has decided to hide his true feelings for political expediency. And Scott DesJarlais is pro-choice (at least when it comes to him and the abortions he's made his mistresses and wife get) but is pro-life in his voting and public record.
Or every single Republican candidate on climate change. I do not for one second believe that they all think it's a hoax. But none of them has the guts to say it out loud. Even Jeb sort-of says it maybe-sorta-yeah-humans-maybe-have-something-to-do-with-it, but golly, that doesn't mean we should actually take action.
I think there's a few things going on here.
Number one, once you acknowledge the issue, you have to take the next step towards the solution, and the solutions are super-politicized. I actually find it pretty funny in some cases. For instance, if you hate pollution, one thing you can push is electric vehicles (assuming you're also pushing for clean power). Okay, great. Well, like any bleeding-edge technology, it's expensive. Even a cheap electric car like a Leaf is a $20k+ product. And then you need to incentivize the purchase, well, you do that with a tax credit. However, now you've put yourself in a spot where you're giving tax credits to people who can afford $20k-$100k+ purchases, or "the rich". Which makes the liberal head spin, which do we hate more, tax credits for rich people or pollution?? CA has started rolling back tax credits for "rich people" which is going to have an adverse affect on EV ownership. The whole thing is silly.
And then you get to things like CAFE. Everyone "knows" that you can't raise the gas tax, because that would A) hurt poor people and B) be very unpolular politically. Okay. So what do we do? I know, make the kinds of vehicles that burn lots of gas more expensive! The problem is, that doesn't necessarily drive down fuel usage, because once you make that initial purchase, you can burn as much fuel as you like. It's like trying to fix obesity by making forks more expensive. It doesn't really work.
I also think there's a distinct failure in government to be able to execute a good cost/benefit study and then act on it. For instance, if you set a target that a power plant must be 99.99% clean, maybe it costs $100 to get it to 99.95% clean, and $1M to get it from 99.95% to 99.99%. Everyone can agree to spend the $100, but I don't trust government to know enough to stop there. Under the "solve global warming at all costs" banner, I don't trust them.
So basically, from my perspective, if you let the nose of the GW camel into the tent, you've opened the door up to some incredibly poor policy decisions. Hell, look at CAFE. You know what caused the explosion of SUVs? CAFE. Why? Because congress can't get out of its own way to predict 2nd order effects. "Oh, hey, people buy lots of cars, and trucks are used for work. Trucks are defined as having traits A, B, and C. We'll make cars have to have much better mileage, but trucks less so." Well any idiot can predict that carmakers would just make cars with attributes A, B, and C and classify them as trucks and Americans would buy them in droves so they're cheaper, but Congress isn't just any idiot because they either couldn't, or didn't care.
And then don't get me started on other initiatives like Cap and Trade and GW credits and such, which are basically just a giant scam.
So it's a completely imperfect and slightly ridiculous stance to take, that GW is not happening, but I think it's really just a defense against having to compromise on garbage policy. I also think the left/GW is happening crowd is suffering from a lot of hysteria inflation. I've seen lots of articles lately on "GW is already happening it's probably too late!!! but we must do something anyways" that just becomes a laughable message. Couple that with climate scientists' habit of making definitive pronouncements that turn out to be false or crap science, and you open the door to a lot of skepticism.
Anyways, just some rambling on the subject.
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