Certifiable Neo-Republicans Part II

The psychological "uniqueness" of the right is playing out in the audiences of Republican debates this season. While it has been rightly made into a news item I don't think many people are surprised by what they see because this is the type of emotion most people equate with the right. They just don't talk about it much. They also don't talk about how this mindset effects their policy stances.

it is settled that Republicans are not champions of carbon reductions. They mostly dispute the science that relates carbon emissions with global warming, if they believe that warming is happening at all. Many Republicans are paid to deny warming by companies that don't want to be told what to do, but what about the rank and file conservative warming deniers? Why would they ardently follow suit on the line that science is wrong when they aren't being paid?

We know Republicans dislike gay soldiers. They want uninsured people to die, and they cheer vengeance killing by the state. It is not a stretch to accept that they just don't like pro-environmental agendas or environmentalists who have always found more sympathy and alliance from the left. When scientists present a solid case for impending environmental disaster, conservative psychology demands denial because as they see it, admitting that the science on warming is correct is to allow liberals/Democrats/progressives/whatever to control an agenda. So they join the campaign to discredit warming as a moneymaking hoax just to keep anyone they don't want to agree with from any type of control.

Meanwhile, people concerned with warming are not looking for control. They are looking for a way to sustain the planet. They seek ways to implement policies to alleviate the situations of unprecedented conflagrations, extreme weather, and fatigued polar bears. Politics is about solutions. Control issues are about psychology. When psychology is disguised as politics it doesn't work and the result is disastrous.

It has gotten so that even the craziest Republicans like Ann Coulter are trying to draft people like Chris Christie to run for president. He is not pathologically against the environment nor does he hate all people who are different from him, but he does get really in-your-face bitchy which tests well among Republicans. Whether or not bitchiness is enough to get the Republican nod is most likely what Christie is weighing these days. He is well aware that what the base of his party really wants to see is him setting a polar bear on fire.

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