She Was Against Climate Change Before She Was For It

"Copenhgen=arrogance of man2think we can change nature's ways.MUST b good stewards of God's earth,but arrogant&naive2say man overpwers nature"

"Earth saw clmate chnge4 ions;will cont 2 c chnges.R duty2responsbly devlop resorces4humankind/not pollute&destroy;but cant alter naturl chng"

--Sarah Palin, via Twitter

Okay, I know these gems from our favorite twit were tweeted over a month ago. This is old, old news. But I've been thinking about this issue and puzzling over dear Sarah's strange change in attitude when it comes to the reality of global warming. (For what it's worth, about 12% of my brain is purely devoted to contemplating Sarah Palin, why she exists and what she means for the future of human existence. So don't ever be surprised to hear that she's been on my mind.)

As Governor of Alaska, Palin wasn't quite so skeptical about anthropogenic global warming as she seems to be today. Out of political necessity, she had to acknowledge the dire danger Alaska faces as glaciers melt and ocean levels rise. The evidence was too present and too immediate to ignore.

Nowadays (a whole 18 months later), she tweets a different tune.

I feel that this reversal on Palin's part truly exemplifies how, when it comes to Sarah's positions and ideologies, there really is no there there. Does she actually have a personal view on climate change? Would it matter if she did?

A lot of people I know powerfully dislike Sarah Palin or find her downright frightening, because to them she is an extreme right-wing ideologue, with all the corresponding ignorance and prejudices. I never really saw that in her, though. To me, she is just a very ambitious and self-entitled person, and ideology will always come second to political expediency for her.

At the same time, her mixed-up positions on climate change do reveal something quite interesting about Sarah.

You see, she has to be against the Copenhagen summit. She has to claim not to accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Because her base, the tea-bagger types, reject the science. So she must also reject it in order to pander to them, her potentially most loyal supporters.

So that prompts me to ask: why would regular, middle- or working-class, conservative Americans care one way or the other about climate change? The answer, I think, is that they've been trained to do so by the powers that be in the Republican establishment, who are in thrall to big oil and other corporate interests. Those corporate interests stand to lose if man-made climate change is recognized as real and governments take steps to curb carbon emissions. So the Republican establishment has an interest in convincing its base that global warming is all a bunch of baloney.

The Republican party has been pandering to a certain demographic -- or collection of linked demographics -- for a few decades now (since Nixon's Southern strategy capitalized on Dixiecrat fear and racism; although it was Reagan who pioneered the more contemporary moral majority idea which persists today). That is, they rely upon the electoral loyalty of middle- and working-class, white, Christian, socially conservative Americans -- the "Joe Sixpacks." The Republicans have very successfully played on this group's prejudices, fears, and religious fervor. For decades. But the GOP has never been controlled by this voting base.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is not a GOP insider. She actually is one of those "regular Americans" who make up the party's base. She is, in a way, the fruit borne of thirty years of Republican and neocon political strategy. And now she's come back to bite them in the ass.

That's why you see this strange dynamic, wherein a woman who in all likelihood believes that global warming is an unstoppable sign of the end times (or else thinks nothing about it at all), is forced to take a position on it which makes no sense for her, in order to appeal to a voting base whose position makes no sense for them either. The GOP gives the people their talking points, then Sarah parrots them back to the people, and the GOP establishment looks at her and thinks, "Who the hell is this woman??"

She is what they have wrought. And she will be their downfall.

It's really quite amusing to watch