GOP Lies to Their Base About Cap and Trade. Is that anyway to Keep them Interested?

It was stunning to read the McClatchy News’ “More fuzzy math? How GOP estimates carbon tax impact,” which revealed just how crazy wrong the Republicans are when it comes to reliably informing their own constituents. They’re not just Bullsh**ng the Democrats and centrists, but their own base. Here it is in black & white:

Republicans' main attack is a claim that climate legislation will cost U.S. households $3,100 a year. They got the number by doing some additional math based on a Massachusetts Institute of Technology study, and they're sticking with it, even though John Reilly, an MIT economist and the author of the study, told them that they misinterpreted his work and that their number is wrong.

You would have thought that would have been it, the story ends there, right? That would be true if the Republican Party wasn’t already blatantly and unabashedly lying about everything already. Partisan? Not when you consider the facts, including:

Those who back emissions controls say the cost of doing nothing will be higher … In Congress, some Democrats and at least one Republican senator support a plan that would return all the money the government collects in the program to all Americans to compensate for the higher energy costs. Republicans, however, say that there's no agreement yet on how to control costs, so they didn't factor that in.

If they didn’t factor that in then the story they’re telling is already a lie. But it gets worse.

Reilly, of MIT and author of the study, wrote a letter to Republicans saying that their figure didn't accurately account for the cost of the permits and that the total cost of those pollution permits would have little bearing on the actual cost to the average person.Republicans dismissed his letter.

They dismissed it. There it is in PRINT for everyone to read. They dismissed the hard cold facts the guy who wrote the study warned. Yet the press will still treat their “debate” as if it had substance and credibility? Sure.

Nonetheless, there's some evidence that their political offensive is working. Just before the House approved the budget on a largely party-line vote, Boehner said that the energy plan would "cost the average family $3,100 a year. As we flip on a light ... in Ohio, our electricity rates go up at least 50 percent the day this bill passes - 50 percent. And they could go as high as 100 percent."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said that because rates could go up, "you must have a credit immediately, dividends, right on that same bill. ... We can't go forward unless we make the ratepayer whole."

Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen and Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker and others, are pushing a form of "cap and dividend" plans. Van Hollen, who's Pelosi's assistant for policy issues, would sell all the allowances at an auction and return a monthly "consumer dividend" to mitigate higher energy prices.

It sounds to me like the panicky right wing politicians want to stir up the base while ignoring the eventual rebates to the consumer for now, get some mileage out of the B.S., and vote against it anyway.

Incredibly, after about three months of the Obama administration, the teabagger base of the same Republican Party that economically destroyed this country, are driven to “take their country back.” For a repeat performance?

That’s the problem.