Sometimes an article is so indicative of the sorry-assed state of American journalism that you have to step outside and catch your breath. Such is the case with Michael Grunwald's latest article in Politico, in which he agonizes over whether the great "bipartisan success story" of the Everglades might be threatened by the President's visit today...which could "politicize" it and thus prompt Florida lunatics in the Tea Party to oppose restoring or (by implication) even protecting the Everglades at all.
That's right. Grunwald worries that for the President to articulate the consensus of 99.9% of all scientists that climate change presents a clear and present danger might offend Republican sensibilities and do more harm than good. Because Black President. Or something.
[D]ragging the Everglades into the partisan battlefield of climate politics could be less advantageous for the Everglades....
To support his theory, Grunwald cites a former Republican Congressional Staffer who is very, very concerned:
For decades, the immense sawgrass marsh has enjoyed motherhood-and-apple-pie status in Florida and Washington, straddling traditional political fault lines on the environment...
It’s not clear how Obama’s effort to turn the Everglades into a global-warming poster child will affect that bipartisan consensus.
“Historically, the Everglades has been an ecumenical issue, bringing together the far left and far right and everyone in between,” said Everglades Foundation executive director Eric Eikenberg, a former Republican congressional staffer. “It’s never been partisan, and it shouldn’t be partisan—that’s the beauty of it.”
No, the beauty of the bipartisan consensus regarding the Everglades was that once upon a time, one of the "Bi's" in "Bipartisan" included a Republican Party not made up of knuckle-dragging climate deniers bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry. When one Party goes off the deep end and prostitutes its political existence to the Climate Denial cabal there can never again be that beautiful "bipartisan" thingy. One of the Parties is dead wrong and hurtling towards destruction, and it
ain't the President's Party. The President's trip is only "political" insofar as the GOP has turned deliberate stupidity on climate change into a litmus test for its Party and its Party's Presidential candidates.
Grunwald has written about the Everglades and the political battles to save them, so he knows the history. What he apparently doesn't understand is that the modern Republican Party is not made up of the same kind of people anymore.
The fear for some activists is that by hitching the Everglades to the polarizing climate issue, he could end up making Republicans less Everglades-friendly rather than more climate-friendly. It was notable that Florida Governor Rick Scott, a Tea Party Republican who has found common ground with Obama on Everglades issues and virtually nothing else, took to Twitter this week to question the president’s commitment to restoration. Obama proposed a $70 million funding increase for the Everglades this year and has repeatedly requested more money than Congress has been willing to provide, but Scott still dinged him for failing to “find a way” to avoid cutbacks.
You know what? If Rick Scott and the Republicans want to trash the Everglades and Florida's tourist economy to punish the Black President, maybe the folks in Florida who voted for Rick Scott might actually come to their senses and elect new leaders next time. What Grunwald is suggesting is that the President may want to back off and let the magical bipartisan waves that existed in decades past flow over him. Perhaps this would allow the poor Republicans to save face and tend to their Everglades without ever having to acknowledge the fact that they're climate positions are wrong. Unfortunately, as any political reporter worth the pixels he produces would realize, that approach hasn't worked with this virulent mutation of the GOP and it won't work now. Nor is there any attempt by Grunwald to fathom why Republicans would rather trash their state than agree with the President. That aspect is just assumed, with Grunwald concluding that the President should be the one to "moderate" his choice of language on this "polarizing" issue.
Let's be clear--the current restoration of the Everglades is inextricably linked to climate change:
Efforts to restore the Everglades and climate change are closely linked. Restoration efforts involve returning more fresh water to the Everglades National Park — which once covered a much larger area. That fresh water will not only replenish the Biscayne Aquifer, upon which South Florida relies for water, but also push back encroaching salt water from rising seas, which is intruding into the park and dramatically altering the ecosystem.
So the President not only has a right to talk about it, he has an obligation to talk about it. Whether Charles and David Koch or their puppets in the Florida statehouse like it or not.
“This is really ground zero” for the climate issue, said Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “As the seas rise, salty ocean water travels inland and threatens the primary source of drinking water for more than a third of Floridians.”
On top of drinking water, the administration charges, climate change also threatens Florida’s tourist economy, estimating that the cost across the state could be as high as $ 9 billion by the year 2025.
The most irksome aspect of Grunwald's article is that it fosters the notion that destructive idiocy of the Tea Party is something that needs to be coddled and "managed" rather than eradicated. The world doesn't have time for that, and the Everglades certainly don't.