Year 2, Month 6, Day 17: King of Hearts

Mitt Romney acknowledges the existence of climate change. Gosh. The NY Daily News is all a-flutter:

Mitt Romney, the newest Republican to declare himself a candidate for President, sounded suspiciously like a Democrat when he said Friday that global warming is real.

“I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course,” Romney said at a Town Hall-type meeting in New Hampshire. “But I believe the world’s getting warmer.”

Romney then added, “And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that.”

That’s heresy in many GOP circles – and a position the other Republican candidates have not taken in public.

Damned if I know what to think about this. I just used it as the hook for a standard Republicans-are-idiots screed. Sent June 3:

It’s testimony to the weirdness of American presidential politics that a perfectly reasonable statement from a Republican contender is viewed as an unforgivable deviation from the party line. The cries of outrage over Mitt Romney’s words on global climate change are coming from the GOP’s mainstream, which has now completely rejected actual science in favor of increasingly improbable conspiracy theories involving Al Gore and compulsory re-education camps for SUV drivers. The few remaining conservatives who are prepared to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus on the human causes of global warming have been relegated to their party’s “lunatic fringe,” which must be an unusual experience for them. While Mr. Romney’s words confirm that he’s not completely off-the-wall, in an electoral environment which values wackiness over factuality, that won’t work in his favor. Someday Republicans will acknowledge the laws of physics — but it’s not going to happen before the 2012 election. Unfortunately.

Warren Senders