Green New Deal vote foreshadows GOP efforts to make sure 2020 is not just a referendum on Trump

[DonViejo]

By James Hohmann
February 14 at 8:22 AM

President Trump criticized congressional Democrats’ Green New Deal during his Feb. 11 rally in El Paso, saying that “it sounds like a high school term paper." (The Washington Post)

With Joanie Greve and Mariana Alfaro

THE BIG IDEA: President Trump will struggle to get reelected if the 2020 campaign is purely a referendum on his own performance, but elections typically become choices between two flawed candidates and their visions.

Republicans are banking on this, and Trump is doing everything possible – more than a year before we learn the identity of the presumptive Democratic nominee – to paint an apocalyptic picture of what would happen if he loses. “They’re coming for your money, and they’re coming for your freedom,” the president said in El Paso on Monday night.

-- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) won’t be on the ballot next year anywhere but the Bronx and Queens, but you wouldn’t know that from listening to GOP messaging. Republicans have gleefully elevated her into the avatar of the opposition, and her botched rollout of the Green New Deal resolution has given them fodder for over-the-top attacks that foreshadow how the next 21 months will likely play out.

For more than a decade, Nancy Pelosi has been a fixture of GOP attack ads. But the Republican campaign committees have de-emphasized the speaker lately in favor of the 29-year-old freshman who has held public office for just six weeks. She is one of 235 Democrats in the House, but it’s a safe bet that GOP candidates up and down the ballot will try to link their opponents to the rookie lawmaker next year.

-- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took the first procedural step last night to bring Ocasio-Cortez’s resolution up for a show vote after the Presidents’ Day recess. His goal is to embarrass Democratic presidential candidates who endorsed the concept before Ocasio-Cortez’s staff retracted a related fact sheet. “We’re going to vote in the Senate and see how many Democrats want to end air travel and cow farts,” the Kentucky Republican said.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2019/02/14/daily-202-green-new-deal-vote-foreshadows-gop-efforts-to-make-sure-2020-is-not-just-a-referendum-on-trump/5c6454f21b326b71858c6b76/

[California_Republic]

1. Socialism! Pelosi! Baby killers! Take your guns!

[watoos]

2. Take the vote, I'm all for it.

Protecting our environment is popular. Chuck Schumer needs to pull up his trousers and keep his members united and vote Yes for the New Green Deal.

Yes, let's have the argument over leaving our planet a healthy place for our grandkids.

[Wounded Bear]

3. It's not just a referendum on Trump. It's a referendum on the Repub party...

all of it.

Time to get the US government off the Fossil Fuels Teat.

[meow2u3]

4. We can easily turn the tables on the repukes' trolling attempts

1. Acknowledge that it's hard to accept grand-scale, radical change and that fear of the unknown is normal. The attitude of "better the devil you know than the devil you don't know" is tough to overcome.

2. Question the motives for a change from fossil fuels to renewables. Chances are, the advocates for the status quo either have, or are representing, financial interests in fossil fuels.

3. Acknowledge their concerns over increased costs in the short term. Low-income families are going to feel the brunt of such changes more acutely than middle- or upper-income people. What about the fear that green energy and automobiles would break the bank of low-income people?

4. Call out propaganda and over-the-top slander. Nobody wants to eliminate air travel, and for repukes to accuse Democrats of wanting to do that is nothing but fossil fuel industry propaganda. We'd rather eliminate McTurtle from the Senate.

A few concerns I have is the timeline of phaseout of fossil fuels. I don't think realistically that we can drastically reduce fossil fuel use within 10 years. For one, there's too much deep-pocketed, potentially criminally violent opposition. The likes of the Kochs and other fossil fuel robber barons would kill anyone in their way before they give up their monopolies or begin to accept green energy as feasible.

We can also suggest that repukes would rather we all breathe toxic fumes instead of air and eat and drink poison instead of food and water.

[Andy823]

5. Good ideas

The republicans don't realize that the majority of Americans think climate change "is" a problem. They want to see changes. Sure the brain dead republican base will be against it, but they are a minority. Republicans may see this tactic backfire on them in the long run.

[meow2u3]

6. Republicans are paid to deny climate change

The fossil fuel industry owns them lock, stock, and barrel. And those billionaire petrodictators pay millionaire lobbyists to bribe repuke politicians as much as million$ to bury the truth to protect their bottom line.