Wednesday, June 05, 2002
GLOBAL WARMING = U.N. SUCK-UP
The brouhaha this week over the Bush Administration’s report to the UN agreeing that there is indeed ‘global warming’ is yet another attempt to enlist international support to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Two weeks ago when President Bush toured Europe trying to coax an anti-Iraq ‘coalition’ from the leaders of Russia, France, Italy and Germany, he was met with a chorus of dissent. Their objection? “Why do you Americans do everything on your own? You will not agree to the International Criminal Court, you are always late paying your UN dues and you won’t sign the Kyoto Treaty.”
Determined to have a ‘regime change’ in Baghdad, Team Bush returned home and began crafting a strategy to woo our erstwhile European allies. The plan was simple: say we agree that there is Global Warming without offering any solutions – and certainly not agreeing with the Kyoto Treaty.
The monkey wrench came when Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh revealed the administration’s shift and quickly rallied overwhelming conservative disappointment over yet another ‘Bush Betrayal’ of a conservative position.
Monday night, faced with a strong ‘revolt on the right,’ White House political guru Karl Rove sketched out the fall-back position: trot the President out to blame the ‘bureaucracy’ – always a convenient conservative target – and to claim that W is still against Kyoto.
How cynical of Rove and the Bush Team.
Exactly whose ‘bureaucracy’ is it, anyway? The EPA is in GOP hands and a Bush fave, Christie Whitman, is running it.
Do they really think we are going to believe that Whitman is going to send such an explosive report to the United Nations without White House approval?
Clearly Rove miscalculated the firestorm that Drudge and Rush ignited Sunday night and Monday. But W and Rove again seem to have temporarily snookered most conservatives by this very lame ‘bureaucracy’ ploy.
Underneath it all is the desire to get the world focused on removing Saddam. Since early spring, other events have pre-empted talk of a new war against Iraq. The never-ending Israeli-Palestinian debacle has clearly distracted both the White House and the Mid-East leaders we would need to conduct such an action.
The worrisome thing is the cavalier way this White House takes conservatives for granted. Just like the first President Bush, this crowd thinks it has the Right in its hip pocket and that there is no logical conservative to challenge them in the 2004 primaries. In other words, there is no Pat Buchanan or Ross Perot to cut into the Bush Base.
Well, guess what?
2004 is a long, long way away. Who knows what will happen by then? Who knows what new political stars may emerge – including conservatives – who might indeed do to this Bush what happened to the first President Bush in 1992?
The disingenuous ‘bureaucracy’ excuse won’t wash. It indicates a deep disdain for conservatives and a cynical ‘breaking’ of campaign pledges in the style of ‘read my lips.’
Prediction: the Bush White House will come to greatly regret this abandonment – however short it may have been – of its environmental pledges. The Right in this country can and will easily abandon the Bushes if something better comes along.
8:26 PM
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