By Kevin D. Williamson
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Writing in the New
York Times, Sean McElwee has produced an example of one of my favorite
genres of political writing: “The idealized version of my preference is ideal.”
McElwee’s finding is that people love greenie-weenie
schemes if you emphasize the benefits and promise that the costs will be
minimal and paid for by someone else. “People Actually Like the Green New
Deal,” the headline reads.
I’m open to the implicit argument that congressional
Democrats are not, technically speaking, people, but they do not seem to care
very much for the Green New Deal: Senator Mitch McConnell offered his
colleagues a chance to vote for a
non-binding resolution in favor of the Green New Deal, and not one—not
one!—Democrat was willing to push the “Yea” button. Some voted against, and
some voted “Present.” If only Arlen Specter had been there to vote Craigellachie.
One wonders whether McElwee ever has met a conservative.
Noting a West Virginia election in which Republicans criticized a local coal
producer for polluting the water, McElwee writes in wonder: “Pause for a
moment: Among the most conservative voters in one of the most conservative
states in the country, the winning message was clean water.” Because . . .
what, Republicans previously ran on a “Hell Yeah Pollute the Bejesus Outta That
Drinking Water!” platform? This is what happens when partisans start believing
their own bullsh**. It makes you stupid.
People love clean water that somebody else pays for, and
high-paying jobs that someone else pays for, etc. McElwee writes:
In our latest polling with Civis
Analytics, a data science firm founded by alumni of the Obama campaign, we
informed respondents that the Green New Deal is a Democratic proposal. Voters
were told that the Green New Deal would “phase out the use of fossil fuels,
with the government providing clean energy jobs for people who can’t find
employment in the private sector. All jobs would pay at least $15 an hour,
include health care benefits and collective bargaining rights.” Many
commentators have argued that the Green New Deal would become unpopular when
voters were informed of the cost, so we added that the plan would “be paid for
by raising taxes on incomes over $200,000 dollars a year by 15 percentage
points.”
This is pretty much pure horsepucky, of course. Would
that 15-point tax hike on incomes over $200,000 actually pay for a program to
“phase out the use of fossil fuels”? Nobody knows, since nobody knows what that
would cost, since the technology to phase out fossil fuels does not currently,
you know, exist. (I am writing this
on an airplane, which is not kept in the air by happy thoughts.) Cookies poll
pretty well, cookies that other people pay for poll very well, and cookies that
magically appear on a plate thanks to magical f***ing magic are the most
popular of all. But there ain’t no cookies like that.
What are the words you’re hearing in the back of your
mind right now? “If you like your doctor . . . you can keep your doctor.”
Many aspects of the so-called Affordable Care Act polled
pretty well and continue to. The Obama administration and congressional
Democrats had some idea of what would poll pretty well, which is why they —
follow along now! — lied their asses off
about the Affordable Care Act. Everybody knew that those taxes and fees that
would keep it from adding “one dime!” — remember that one dime? — to the
deficit were not going to be collected, that the mandates and other unpopular
parts were not going to be enforced, that there would be special carve-outs for
every well-connected Democratic political constituency liquid enough to lick a
boot. And now the ACA is out there bobbling around shambolically like Mickey
Rourke in legislative form, and Democrats are ponderously agape like: “How the
hell did that happen?”
The fact that bullsh** polls well does not make it
non-bullsh**. And the so-called Green New Deal is pure bullsh** — with a weird
focus on other products of bovine recta as well.
It matters how you phrase the question. “Lots of nice
stuff at no cost to me? Awesome!” Vs. “Turn over much of the productive
capacity of the U.S. economy to the management of a half-educated bartender
from New York who doesn’t know what a tax credit is or how airplanes don’t fall
out of the goddamned sky and pray that it turns out half as well as the
Affordable Care Act? Maybe not!”
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