Secrets of the GOP Science War: How Spin-Masters and Pundits Confuse Conservatives About Facts
October 3, 2015 in Blogs
When scientists announced the discovery of water on Mars recently, Rush Limbaugh drew the obvious conclusion: It was all part of a conspiratorial plot:
LIMBAUGH: If there was once all that water on Mars, and there is a lot of water here on earth, what’s going to happen to our ocean? How did the water vanish?
My point is, they’re presenting all this stuff to you as fact just like they’re presenting everything involving global warming as scientific fact. It`s nothing but wild guesses. It’s nothing but based on computer models which is the result of data input that who knows if it’s legit or not.
That’s to be expected from Limbaugh, I suppose. If you’re a huckster by trade, the truth is your enemy—and not just the truth, but the very possibility of truth. The veryexistence of science is a threat to you. So naturally, if you’ve got as much time to fill as Limbaugh does, you engage in war on science. But the real problem isn’t Rush Limbaugh, it’s the way that the entirety of the GOP adapts to him in various different ways—especially those who are deemed “sensible” in the world of bipartisan consensus, whose job it is to make plausible excuses for their sorry party.
Case in point: GOP strategist Liz Mair, who back in March was abruptly fired after just one day as a Scott Walker online strategist, in response to outrage over an earlier set of tweets critical of Iowa during a January forum. After her firing, Mair fired off a long tweet storm clarifying her views, which she did again—with a more critical edge—just after Walker left the race a few weeks ago. In short, if there’s anyone working inside the GOP likely to be honestly critical of its problems, it’s Mair. Which presumably is why MSNBC likes having her on. But Limbaugh’s anti-science conspiracism clearly illuminates the limits of such critical honesty.
Thus, when Chris Matthews played that clip of Limbaugh and opened up a discussion on “Hardball” on Sept. 29 [transcript], Mair …read more
Source: ALTERNET
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