The Weekend Wonk: Young Republicans Say GOP Deserves to Lose without a Climate Plan
Ramasmarmy has an issue with Young Republicans.
I’ve posted on this several times already, but worth taking a look at some of the mainstream follow up reporting. This week’s Republican debate showed that candidate Vivek Ramaswamy at least has enough awareness of how out of step he is with younger Republicans that he had the good sense to lie to them (in a “piss on your leg and tell you it’s raining” sort of way) about his climate position. (see CNN report below)
Above, Washington Post profile of Benji Backer, a leading voice among Young Republicans on climate issues, mentioned prominently below.
Republicans “deserve to lose” electorally if they can’t show they care about the climate crisis, according to the head of a conservative climate organization that put forward a rare question on the issue to GOP candidates in Wednesday’s televised debate.
The Republican presidential hopefuls, minus Donald Trump, were asked at the Fox News debate what they would do to improve the party’s standing on climate policy by Alexander Diaz, a young conservative who is part of the American Conservation Coalition (ACC), a youth conservative group that pushes for action on the climate crisis.
Asked by the moderators for a show of hands over whether climate change is real, none of the candidates did so, with one, Vivek Ramaswamy, the far-right businessman, declaring that the “climate agenda is a hoax”. Two other candidates, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley, accepted the well-established scientific reality of global heating but looked to shift the blame to other major carbon polluters, such as China, and even, in Scott’s case, to Africa, which is responsible for about 3% of the world’s emissions.
Benji Backer, founder and executive chairman of ACC, said the question on climate was “historic” and highlighted the desire among young Republicans for their leaders to take the threat of global heating seriously.
“That we didn’t get an immediate hand raise speaks to how much work we have left to do; young people will never vote for a candidate that doesn’t believe in climate change,” he said after the debate. “We’re not going away, we are normalizing this as part of the Republican conversation. Republicans deserve to lose if they are climate deniers and don’t have a plan.”
Backer said that Ramaswamy “has always been wrong on this issue” and that Haley’s answer was a “winning one” for young people. He noted how Ramaswamy, who he said an ACC colleague confronted about his remarks after the debate, was booed by the audience for his dismissal of climate science.
“Republicans are environmentalists, we are the original conservationists,” Backer told a debate after-party attended by campaign staffers, some Republican members of Congress and Ramaswamy, a video shared with the Guardian shows. “And by sitting on the sidelines and letting the Democrats take this issue and run with it over the last few decades we’ve not only lost an entire generation of young voters we’ve also ceded the ground to really, really bad policy that is impacting our day-to-day lives in so many ways.”
Polling shows there is growing concern among all Americans over the impacts of the climate crisis, which have been on vivid display this summer, with devastating fires in Hawaii, floods in California and Vermont and a series of punishing heatwaves that have broken temperature records across the US.
The specter of Trump, the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination despite his various criminal indictments, still haunts Republicans when it comes to dealing with the climate crisis, according to Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman who now advocates for conservative action on climate.
“At the debate last night the future called to the present and the present seized up in fear – the candidates couldn’t answer the future’s call because they are in fear of a certain constituency in the party and the person who leads that,” Inglis said.
“It’s an abysmal failure of vision. The smart money is moving towards innovation to deal with climate change. But that guy [Trump] is an angel of death. He can’t get you elected, but he can kill you in the primary.”
Environmental groups were scathing of the Republican candidate’s responses. “Republicans are stuck between a hoax and a hard place,” said Lori Lodes, executive director of Climate Power. “Their Maga base demands a rigid stance against the obvious reality of climate change, which requires that they ignore what we’re all experiencing – extreme weather that disrupts lives and destroys communities week in and week out.”
During this week’s Republican primary debate on Fox News, a young voter notably asked about the climate crisis: How would these presidential candidates assuage concerns that the Republican Party “doesn’t care” about the issue?
What followed the question was one of the night’s most chaotic exchanges, demonstrating the challenge some conservatives face in getting climate policy on the 2024 GOP agenda, even as extreme weather takes its toll on millions of people across the country.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the leader of a state that has been thrashed by deadly extreme weather in recent years, refused the moderators’ show-of-hands question on whether climate change is caused by humans. He used the moment to deride the media and President Joe Biden’s response in Maui.
When 38-year-old Vivek Ramaswamy – notably the youngest candidate on stage – called the “climate change agenda” a “hoax,” an answer that elicited intense boos from the audience.
A majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents – 55% – say human activity is causing changes to the world’s climate, according to a recent Washington Post/University of Maryland poll. It also found a majority of Americans and Republicans say their area has been impacted by extreme heat in the past five years.
But connecting the dots between climate and extreme weather is proving a more partisan issue. The poll found there are deep divides between Republicans and Democrats on the question of whether human-caused climate change is contributing to extreme weather: just 35% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they think climate change is a major factor in extremely hot days, compared with 85% of those who lean Democrat.
After the debate, a prominent conservative climate group said Ramaswamy tried to clarify his position.
“He came to our after-party and he blatantly told us that he believes climate change is real,” Benji Backer, founder of the American Conservation Coalition, told CNN. “So, he changed his position again.”
Asked by CNN on Friday whether he believes climate change is real, Ramaswamy responded, “Climate change has existed as long as the Earth has existed. Manmade climate change has existed as long as man has existed on the earth.” In an email, Ramaswamy’s campaign spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN the candidate does believe climate change is real, but policies to address it “have little to do with climate change and more to do with penalizing the West as a way to achieve global ‘equity.’”
Yet for Republicans working to make climate policy more mainstream in the GOP, Ramaswamy’s language at the debate echoed a climate crisis-denying candidate who wasn’t onstage, former President Donald Trump. Trump has called climate change itself a “hoax” and falsely claimed wind turbines cause cancer.
“The fact that he chose the word hoax, to me, he’s emulating what President Trump had said before,” Heather Reams, president of conservative nonprofit Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, told CNN. Reams, who was sitting in the audience in Milwaukee, noted that Ramaswamy calling the “climate change agenda” a hoax didn’t go over well in a room full of Republicans.
“The whole place booed him, so it wasn’t well received,” Reams said. “Hearing booing was actually heartening to hear that the party is really moving on, they’re seeing the economic opportunities that can be had for the United States being a leader in lowering emissions.”
Ramaswamy’s response was an attempt to go after the older GOP voting base in the primary, Backer said. It’s the kind of audience that Fox News has historically played to when it hosts climate deniers on some of its shows or casts doubt on the connection between extreme weather and the climate crisis – but Backer said the fact the network even asked this question “just shows that the pendulum is shifting.”
Backer warned Ramasway’s response to the question risks alienating younger conservative voters who are increasingly concerned about climate impacts.
“I’ve voted in two presidential elections and I’ve never voted for a Republican president in my life, because I don’t vote for climate deniers,” Backer said, adding that climate denial “is the way of the past.”
Railing against “wokeism” and the “climate cult,” Mr. Ramaswamy has staked out unorthodox positions on a number of issues and characterized himself as the candidate most likely to appeal to young and new conservative voters.
Here’s a fact check of his recent remarks on the campaign trail and during the debate.
False. There is no evidence to support this assertion. A spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy cited a 2022 column in the libertarian publication “Reason” that argued that limiting the use of fossil fuels would hamper the ability to deliver power, heat homes and pump water during extreme weather events. But the campaign did not provide examples of climate change policies actually causing deaths.
In campaign appearances and social media posts, Mr. Ramaswamy has also pointed to a decline in the number of disaster-related deaths in the past century, even as emissions have risen That, experts have said, is largely because of technological advances in weather forecasting and communication, mitigation tools and building codes. The May study by the World Meteorological Organization, for example, noted that 90 percent of extreme weather deaths occur in developing countries — precisely because of the gap in technological advances. Disasters are occurring at increasing frequencies, the organization has said, even as fatalities decrease.
7 thoughts on “The Weekend Wonk: Young Republicans Say GOP Deserves to Lose without a Climate Plan”
There are several indications that younger Republicans are interested in doing something, however modest, about climate change. Kudos to Benji Backer for saying he’ll never vote for a denier – that indicates a real belief in the importance of the issue. But, I have to wonder how many others in the GOP are like him. There’s very little signal so far in actual voting patterns that shows climate change is a primary issue for the GOP – while some may believe it’s a problem, they continue to vote Republican because at best climate is a secondary issue for them.
On Ramaswamy, I’d suggest he’s done the political calculus himself that aggressively denying human-caused climate change and any action against it is the surer path to either getting the GOP nomination or a cabinet position if the eventual GOP candidate wins. He has previously donated to Democrats and he’s listed as unaffiliated in his voting. When pressed, he gives subtle nods that on an innermost level he knows human-caused climate change is real – but his actions suggest a more Machiavellian approach to attaining political power. I think he knows what he’s doing, as awful as it is, as opposed to being stupid or dogmatic.
Trump modeled it, but Ramaswamy has learned that combativeness is key to winning large chunks of the GOP vote. The age of moderates in the Republican Party is long gone.
Benjamin Backer: “…and the reason for that is because the conservative movement has not reached out about the climate and the environment.”
Yeah, right. That’s the reason. It has nothing to do with Republicans and FF interests shooting down every attempt to bring it up and try to address it for the past few decades.
If you jump off a 10-story building, for 9 stories you can all agree not to talk about gravity. That’s essentially what the GOP has done with climate change.
I guess it’s good news that conservatives are finally willing to endorse measures that are either too late or not enough. If they don’t like the government telling them what to do they should look at what happens in a hurricane. The government can tell you to shut down your business and even force you to leave your home and tell you what roads to take doing it and no-one questions this because it’s obviously the right thing to do. It’s a bit late to incentivise building more storm resistant homes in less flood prone areas.
The day is soon here where there’ll be no alternative to the government telling you what to do because that’s the only effective course of action.
One thing government could do is remove all subsidies from the fossil fuel industry and all taxes from renewable solutions. Conservatives love removing subsidies and lowering taxes don’t they?
Telling people what to do…. Is what the government does. That’s its function. It’s purely a matter what it pushes, and politics are about groups of people trying to push what they want over what others want.
Conservatives are frankly full of sheet when they say they just want the government out of people’s lives, meaning that they stand for limited government for all people across the board. What they really mean is that they want the government out of their own lives, but are perfectly happy that it’s in other groups of people’s lives.
They’d never stand for your excellent idea of removing subsidies for FF and taxes for renewables.
In the U.S. recently, state governments have banned access to abortions and taken over school districts to teach children what they prefer. In Texas, besides erecting deadly barriers to migrants, the Legislature has gone on a bender propping up fossil fuels while making it tougher for renewables: https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/25/texas-energy-renewables-natural-gas-grid-politics/
The Republican Party’s form of ‘limited goverment’ is snake oil – the GOP wants people to think it’s offering something of benefit for everyone, when they’re the only ones who will get money out of it.
Politicians like Ramaswamy will end their debate speeches about FREEDOM!, but they’ll curb freedoms in an instant, especially for minorities, if they have the political power to do so.
Conservatives are frankly full of sheet when they say they just want the government out of people’s lives, meaning that they stand for limited government for all people across the board. What they really mean is that they want the government out of their own lives, but are perfectly happy that it’s in other groups of people’s lives.
They want government out of the boardroom and into the bedroom. They’re for businesses, not citizens.
Yeah, but more than that, too. They want government out of certain boardrooms, not others. For a political party that cries foul about picking winners in businesses, they do it themselves all the time. And if a business dares to defy some Republicans, they’ll be targeted themselves (DeSantis and Disney).
There are several indications that younger Republicans are interested in doing something, however modest, about climate change. Kudos to Benji Backer for saying he’ll never vote for a denier – that indicates a real belief in the importance of the issue. But, I have to wonder how many others in the GOP are like him. There’s very little signal so far in actual voting patterns that shows climate change is a primary issue for the GOP – while some may believe it’s a problem, they continue to vote Republican because at best climate is a secondary issue for them.
On Ramaswamy, I’d suggest he’s done the political calculus himself that aggressively denying human-caused climate change and any action against it is the surer path to either getting the GOP nomination or a cabinet position if the eventual GOP candidate wins. He has previously donated to Democrats and he’s listed as unaffiliated in his voting. When pressed, he gives subtle nods that on an innermost level he knows human-caused climate change is real – but his actions suggest a more Machiavellian approach to attaining political power. I think he knows what he’s doing, as awful as it is, as opposed to being stupid or dogmatic.
So far, ‘clout hounds’ like Musk and Scott Adams are praising him:
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/conservative-clout-hounds-loved-vivek-191522587.html
His combative approach to the debates, I believe, is also an intentional decision on his part. I ran across this lately, I think there’s some truth in it:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-personality-trait-that-is-ripping-america-and-the-world-apart/
Trump modeled it, but Ramaswamy has learned that combativeness is key to winning large chunks of the GOP vote. The age of moderates in the Republican Party is long gone.
Benjamin Backer: “…and the reason for that is because the conservative movement has not reached out about the climate and the environment.”
Yeah, right. That’s the reason. It has nothing to do with Republicans and FF interests shooting down every attempt to bring it up and try to address it for the past few decades.
If you jump off a 10-story building, for 9 stories you can all agree not to talk about gravity. That’s essentially what the GOP has done with climate change.
I guess it’s good news that conservatives are finally willing to endorse measures that are either too late or not enough. If they don’t like the government telling them what to do they should look at what happens in a hurricane. The government can tell you to shut down your business and even force you to leave your home and tell you what roads to take doing it and no-one questions this because it’s obviously the right thing to do. It’s a bit late to incentivise building more storm resistant homes in less flood prone areas.
The day is soon here where there’ll be no alternative to the government telling you what to do because that’s the only effective course of action.
One thing government could do is remove all subsidies from the fossil fuel industry and all taxes from renewable solutions. Conservatives love removing subsidies and lowering taxes don’t they?
Telling people what to do…. Is what the government does. That’s its function. It’s purely a matter what it pushes, and politics are about groups of people trying to push what they want over what others want.
Conservatives are frankly full of sheet when they say they just want the government out of people’s lives, meaning that they stand for limited government for all people across the board. What they really mean is that they want the government out of their own lives, but are perfectly happy that it’s in other groups of people’s lives.
They’d never stand for your excellent idea of removing subsidies for FF and taxes for renewables.
In the U.S. recently, state governments have banned access to abortions and taken over school districts to teach children what they prefer. In Texas, besides erecting deadly barriers to migrants, the Legislature has gone on a bender propping up fossil fuels while making it tougher for renewables:
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/25/texas-energy-renewables-natural-gas-grid-politics/
The Republican Party’s form of ‘limited goverment’ is snake oil – the GOP wants people to think it’s offering something of benefit for everyone, when they’re the only ones who will get money out of it.
Politicians like Ramaswamy will end their debate speeches about FREEDOM!, but they’ll curb freedoms in an instant, especially for minorities, if they have the political power to do so.
They want government out of the boardroom and into the bedroom. They’re for businesses, not citizens.
Yeah, but more than that, too. They want government out of certain boardrooms, not others. For a political party that cries foul about picking winners in businesses, they do it themselves all the time. And if a business dares to defy some Republicans, they’ll be targeted themselves (DeSantis and Disney).