CNN on Thursday hosted an unprecedented seven-hour-long town hall with 10 of the Democrats seeking the 2020 nomination.
While the specifics candidates offered differed—Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) wants an energy consumption competition among neighborhoods—the party essential presented a unified front in support of the environment.
Climate change, they all agreed, is a real concern, and one that the U.S. must mobilize against. Almost every candidates’ proposal pledged trillions of dollars against the crisis.
And the response from leading conservatives was that 10 prominent politicians, all in agreement the nation faced unprecedented problems, were wrong, pandering, and delusional.
Climate change is a partisan fight, with Republicans unified against it, seeing solutions and proposals as impractical, unnecessary, and dumb. Just look at some of the responses to last night’s event, which came in the wake of the fifth Category 5 hurricane of the past three years barrelling down on the U.S.
Calls to eliminate fossil fuels were framed as socialism and not environmentalism. Climate change was attacked by the likes of Bill O’Reilly and the Republican National Committee.
In her just unveiled Green New Deal, Senator Elizabeth Warren promises to jettison fossil fuels in ten years because to not do so would be racist.
— Bill O'Reilly (@BillOReilly) September 5, 2019
The ruse here is income redistribution. https://t.co/tMbMAIal4U
4+ hours in to the Dems’ climate change forum. Here’s what we know:
— GOP (@GOP) September 5, 2019
Democrats’ calls for the elimination of fossil fuels could impact 1.62 MILLION jobs and cost taxpayers TRILLIONS of dollars.
Warren's climate plan: $3 Trillion
— Ronna McDaniel (@RonnaMcDaniel) September 4, 2019
Kamala's: $10 Trillion
Bernie’s: $16.3 Trillion
Their socialist Green New Deal: $93 Trillion
Watching Biden call for eliminating ALL fossil fuels, killing millions of American jobs: PRICELESS
Voters don’t want their extreme agenda!
RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel attacked the Green New Deal as a project that would eliminate jobs. “Voters don’t want their extreme agenda!” she tweeted.
When Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) discussed women’s rights and access to birth control to help fight overpopulation, conservatives said that he supported “human sacrifice to make the sky god send rain.”
Abortion to fight climate change is 2019’s human sacrifice to make the sky god send rain. https://t.co/aTWiFsRf2a
— Jeremy Boreing (@JeremyDBoreing) September 5, 2019
ATTN DemocRATS
— Dr. Marty Fox 🇺🇸 (@DrMartyFox) September 5, 2019
Normal People Hope You Run On This Message#ClimateChange Is An Existential Threat
But YOU Can Help By Killing More Babies
And Voting For DemocRATS#ClimateTownHall pic.twitter.com/OIoUQP7W7W
A number of leading conservatives applauded the town hall as an inadvertent ad for President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.
https://twitter.com/BuckSexton/status/1169597371665305602
We are going to shut down all coal plants.
— Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) September 5, 2019
– @JoeBiden
The government should regulate what you can eat.
– @KamalaHarris
We are going to buy back all non electric cars.
– @AndrewYang
Climate change is worse than WW2
– @PeteButtigieg
Republican ad makers 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/40ZsKm6fZQ
So when taking over the healthcare system and 1/6th of our economy didn't work so well Dems changed the playbook and switched to Climate Change it's still the same old wealth redistribution scam https://t.co/MN9HNZKVWO via @gatewaypundit
— Last Call For Liberty 1776 🇺🇸 …Nix 46 (@kandibar2011) September 5, 2019
https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1169600419804278785
https://twitter.com/BuckSexton/status/1169613928348958720
Leading conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, in the wake of it all, called the town hall “political suicide.”
This Democratic climate change townhall is their worst political nightmare. It is a litany of promises to worsen Americans’ lives in ways that will utterly fail to assuage climate change. It’s political suicide, and useless to boot.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 5, 2019
But half the country is ready to make these changes in a Green New Deal, according to polls. It’s just that the right that is reticent and willing to fight in the face of scientific evidence and drastically swinging weather patterns and catastrophic events and would rather crack jokes. And if it truly was the “political suicide” as Shapiro says, you’d likely see a number of Democrats running away from climate change to pander and secure more voters.
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