Romm Cherry-Picking, With Fudge
Joe Romm has a curious post up today that begins this way:
While some confused people think we are headed to a post-partisan era, more reality-based analysts, like centrist political reporter Dana Milbank, know what nonsense that is.
Romm’s “post-partisan era” link takes you to a piece he wrote several weeks ago that was critical of a bipartisan white paper that had advocated massive public investment be the cornerstone of a new energy/climate strategy, rather than carbon pricing. In floating this trial balloon, the authors of the proposal (representing three think tanks across the political spectrum) were in no way suggesting that the nation is headed to a “post-partisan era.”
So that’s the first bit of sly disingenuousness in Romm’s current post. The second involves referencing Dan Milbank’s latest WaPo column to make a larger point about the emerging makeup of the Republican party, which Romm writes
is the most consequential political reality for climate and clean energy policy for the foreseeable future)…it’s important to hear it from the bastion of centrist inside-the-beltway analysis.
I want to point out that Milbank, the “reality-based,” wise “centrist,” also wrote this column two weeks ago, in which he said that it was time for Democrats
to come up with an alternative to regulating carbon, a Plan B for climate change.
Milbank went on to discuss the “makings of a cross-ideological coalition” for geoengineering research:
At the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Samuel Thernstrom wrote this year that “ignoring geoengineering is potentially dangerous and irresponsible.” At the liberal Center for American Progress, Andrew Light tells me that because “research is already starting in some parts of the world, we would be foolhardy not to be looking into it.”
Conspicuously, Romm chose not to mention this bit of “inside-the-beltway” analysis.
I’m not sure I see the “gotcha” here.
There are two pretty contradictory pieces of inside-the-beltway conventional wisdom among political pundits at issue here: A) climate legislation is “dead” and a new plan is needed, and B) the GOP is not going to compromise on an ambitious clean energy or climate program and moreover is going to enact a series of witch hunts against climate regulatory and science findings they dislike.
I do think Romm should have pointed out that Milbank might want to buy into A while acknowledging the reality of B, though that would only seem to strengthen the point that A is a pipe dream.
C’mon TBA. Romm ignores a Milbank column that says time for Plan B and oh, BTW, there’s a “cross-ideological coalition” forming on geoengineering…” the exact kind of coalition Romm ridicules as an aside in the first sentence of his current post.
It was too delicious for me to pass up, being that both columns come from Milbank and Romm chose to highlight the one (and ignore the other one) that suits his narrative.
Also, none of those think tank authors suggested that we’re heading into a post-partisan landscape.
I agree that Romm is cherry-picking here, but what I’m saying is that I think if he highlighted both it would only reinforce the argument that the A meme (“Plan B/New Narrative”) is just as unworkable as emissions pricing under B (the upcoming, clean energy/climate hostile Republican House).
In other words, sure, point out his selective citing in order to promote his favored narrative. But zooming out, it’s hard to see how both ideas together don’t end up making A look silly in light of B.
If Milbank sees a “cross ideological coalition forming” that has any members of the curent crop of GOPers in it, then he’s hallucinating. Otherwise what TB says; the only question at issue is how Kieth and Pielke Jr. and others will try to blame climate scientists when Plan B goes exactly nowhere.