There’s probably been a little too much speculation of late about what to expect from Capitol Hill after the 2014 midterms. Election Day is still 230 days away; some states haven’t even held primaries yet; and the political winds may yet shift direction more than once between now and November.
The scuttlebutt about how a “Republican-led Senate” might deal with everything from health care to the debt ceiling to filibusters is interesting, but it’s also premature. The GOP minority seems very likely to add seats, but it’ll be a while before anyone can say with confidence exactly how many.
That said, it’s probably not too early for the left to start thinking seriously about how best to light a fire under the feet of progressive voters. Maybe a story like this will raise eyebrows?
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe said Tuesday he will again head the Senate committee overseeing transportation and environmental regulation if Republicans win control of the upper chamber in November.Speaking to about 50 plant managers and others associated with Tulsa Port of Catoosa tenants, Inhofe said a Republican victory would make him chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (or EPW Committee) is, among other things, responsible for oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency — an agency Inhofe has publicly hated for much of his career.
Indeed, the fact of the matter is that if Republicans take the Senate majority for the first time since 2006, the party will put one of the nation’s most prominent climate deniers in charge of the Senate panel responsible for environmental policy.
This is the seriousness with which the likely chairman of the committee would take environmental policy.
Cold weather tends to bring out the climate change deniers — in the Senate, that would be Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). On Monday, Inhofe pointed to freezing temperatures across the country to explain climate change science is both “laughable” and rigged.Usually the first to seize on snowy weather to argue against climate action, Inhofe described how the United Nations invented the “global warming thing” as a power grab. In his words, U.N. climate change conferences to negotiate global action are nothing more than a “Global Warming Party” with “all you can eat” and “all you can drink.” He talked about how scientists were recently stuck in Antarctic ice, which to him was more proof climate change is not happening. It is Inhofe’s tradition to seize on wintry weather: Once in 2010, his family built an igloo during a blizzard called, “Al Gore’s new home.”
Inhofe is up for re-election in 2014. His seat is considered one of the safest — if not the safest — in the United States.
Recommended
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."