Shaming America yet again, Republican Establishment Senators were no-show for climate scientists invited to speak to them on matters of great importance to their electorates. Conversely, all Democrat members were present-Mark Steyn

12/14/15, "The GOP Don't Never Dance With Them What Brung Them," Mark Steyn, Steyn on America 

"I've received many letters like this about my appearance last week in the United States Senate:

Dear Mr. Steyn:

I've been following the reports on your appearance to give Senate testimony, and the troubles you and other witnesses encountered there. I don't want to pretend that I'm any kind of expert in such matters, but it was my impression going in that the hearings were Senator Cruz's idea, and that you were his invitee. If so, how were the proceedings commandeered by Sen. Markey in the manner that your posts suggest?

Sincerely,
Thomas Evans...

It might be truer to say that the Democrats as a whole commandeered the proceedings. But even that would not be strictly correct. What happened is that Senate Republicans chose to permit the Dems to commandeer them

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How did that happen? Ted Cruz's Science committee is a sub-committee of the Senate Commerce committee. The sub-committee has six Republican members, five Democrats. The senior party representatives on the overall Commerce committee - John Thune (Republican) and Bill Nelson (Democrat) - are ex officio members of the sub-committee and are also permitted to attend. So there should have been seven Republicans and six Democrats in the room that afternoon. Instead:

All the Democratic subcommittee members were present and accounted for: Senator Tom Udall, (D-NM), the Ranking Member; Senator Ed Markey (D-MA); Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ); Senator Gary Peters (D-MI); Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI). Also in attendance, the Ranking Member of Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL).
In Washington, as Woody Allen once joked, ninety percent of success is showing up. All the Democrats showed up.
However, John Thune (R-SD), Chairman of the full committee, was a no-show.
Thus, the most senior Senator present for the hearing, in an institution dedicated to Seniority (hence the name "Senate"), was a Democrat.
Only one other Republican was present on the dais, Senators Steve Daines (R-MT). All the other G.O.P. members, including Marco Rubio (R-FL), Jerry Moran (R-KS), and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) were absent. Message: I don't care.

Also absent was Cory Gardner, the Colorado Republican. Daines tossed a friendly pitch for his home-state audience, with amusing references to some pal of his re-charging his Tesla in Bozeman. And, when he was done schmoozing for Eyewitness News in Bozeman, he left the room. So, for the remaining 70 per cent of the hearing, what should have been six Democrats and seven Republicans was instead six Democrats and one Republican - the lonely chairman, Ted Cruz. That's why the Dems got 85 per cent of the question time and lobbed puffballs at Rear Admiral Titley - until eventually Judith Curry and I chose to push back at the fatuous Markey.

Why did this happen? I'm a foreigner, and I certainly rarely feel more foreign than when I'm in the ghastly US Senate. But I've attended committees in the Canadian parliament and other parts of the Commonwealth and can't recall any occasion when the majority party's members have chosen to boycott the hearing.

Why did no Republicans show up? Rubio was off campaigning in California and ignoring all those senatorial duties his constituent Jeb! wants him to focus on. But Thune and the rest of those guys were all in the building, voting on various Senate flim-flam going on that day. So even though they were 90 seconds away they chose not to attend.
 
The not so subtle reason is that, like Bob Dole (currently threatening, if Cruz is the nominee, to "oversleep" on Election Day), their antipathy to Ted Cruz outweighs everything else. Dole feels that Cruz has been given the greatest honor any man can have - the keys to the Senate men's room - and yet he won't play by the rules of the club.

The slightly subtler reason is that these Republicans felt that the whole climate biz was a bit of a hot potato for them. Yet, putting aside my own presence, the three scientists in the room were among the most respectable figures in the field: John Christy is the great innovator who developed the world's first satellite temperature record; Judith Curry, among the old boys' club of climate science, is perhaps the most distinguished female climatologist on earth, although she would disdain such a categorization; and Will Happer is an eminent Princeton physics professor garlanded with almost all the major awards in his field. All of them have paid a price for speaking out against Big Climate.  

So, in disdaining Cruz (and/or me), senators Thune, Rubio, Moran, Sullivan and Gardner were also disdaining some of the most distinguished climate realists on the planet. Those three scientists did not deserve that from a handful of political hacks. Indeed, by their absence, they were contributing to the overall message of climate conformism: If you disagree with the "97 per cent consensus", at least have the good taste to crawl away and die somewhere far off out of sight.
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As I've often said, the Republican Party is so good at folding they should be the White House valets. Doesn't matter what your issue is, they'll fold.

They fold on debt, on immigration, on regulation, on gay marriage, on Obamacare, on [Insert Your Issue Here]. Regardless of the merits of this or that issue, on the whole they'd rather pre-emptively surrender. And I got the definite sense from their no-show last week that for these guys global warming will be just the 173rd issue for which discretion is the better part of valor. Save your powder - for next year, next decade, whenever. If you're a Kansan, Floridian, Coloradan, South Dakotan or Alaskan and you voted because you want sanity in environmental policy, well, tough: the GOP don't dance with them what brung them, no way, no how.

Which may have something to do with why Trump, Cruz, Carson and Fiorina have a combined 66 per cent of the vote in the latest poll - and the two clubbable senators, Rubio and Graham, have a combined 11 per cent."...