I don’t follow politics as much as I probably should, but the Republicans advances in this election, including retaking the House of Representatives, appear to have been the result of voter dissatisfaction with the economy, jobs, and government spending. To a political simpleton like me, this implies that the Republican controlled House will therefore focus their legislative efforts on the economy, jobs, and government spending.
Or they could do something like this:
The GOP plans to hold high profile hearings examining the alleged “scientific fraud” behind global warming, a sleeper issue in this election that motivated the base quite a bit.
Now that’s just what Mark Ambinder of The Atlantic says they’re going to do. I don’t know anything about Ambinder. I don’t know where he gets his information, and I don’t know if he has an agenda. But it wouldn’t be the first time a political party rode one set of public concerns to get into office, and then began pursuing a completely different set of issues once they had power.
(Hat tip: The Raw Story)
The anti-science rhetoric was pretty strong from the right-wing this past election. Perhaps I just noticed it more since I follow science related issues, so I don’t see this as any sort of bait-and-switch. Many Republican candidates ran using various anti-science platforms.
Hypocritically, though, many Republicans also chastised Obama for slashing NASA’s budget (when, in fact, Obama was increasing their budget) claiming that the US science would suffer.