Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Ezra Klein on Lindsey Graham’s decision to abandon the climate bill he helped write:

It’s further evidence that the “lone Republican” strategy doesn’t work. Time and again, Democrats have ended up in a room with a single Republican who seemed willing to cut a deal. It was Olympia Snowe on health care, Bob Corker on financial regulation and Lindsey Graham on climate change. In every case, the final bill looked a lot like what that Republican helped negotiate. And in every single case, the Republican realized that he or she couldn’t get more support from their party and so they eventually bolted the effort.

If you think this has all been a cynical strategy, it’s been brilliantly successful. On the one hand, Republicans have had a major role in shaping these bills. On the other hand, they haven’t had to vote for these bills, and so they could cleanly campaign against legislation that a member of their party helped write. And as an added bonus, Democrats are stuck trying to defend a bill that their base doesn’t like very much and that’s thick with compromises that annoy political elites.

I don’t know if it’s all been a cynical strategy or not, but it’s worth noting that it hasn’t been brilliantly successful. Healthcare passed. Financial reform looks set to pass. Climate legislation won’t, but let’s face it: that’s as much due to lack of support from centrist midwest Democrats as it is to lack of support from Republicans.

Now, the Republican strategy does seem to have energized their base and will probably lead to big wins in November and gridlock down the road. The lesson Republicans are likely to take away from this is that obstructionism works and America is a tea party country after all. Hooray! But in fact, most of this has been baked into the cake for a long time simply due to lousy economic conditions. It’s going to take the GOP a few more years in the wilderness to figure out just how wrong they are.

UPDATE: For more on Lindsey Graham’s fairly bizarre turnaround on global warming, check out Kate Sheppard’s interview with him today. “It’s not a stretch to say that what goes into the air is contributing to global warming,” Graham said, “but I don’t want to be in the camp that says I know people in Northern Virginia will never see snow.” And then it gets weirder. Maybe Sarah Palin has gotten hold of his brain?

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate