McConnell’s GND Vote Shows Why GOP Can’t Govern

Mitch McConnell thinks he is being clever by bringing the proposal from Markey and AOC on the Green New Deal (GND), or as he called it, the “new, green deal”, up for a vote. His intent, of course is to get all those Senate Democratic presidential hopefuls on the record so Trump and the GOP can bash them with propaganda in 2020. This tactic is unlikely to succeed as Democrats will merely vote present as they did when McConnell tried this same trick with Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All proposal in 2017.

Rather than being clever, McConnell is only highlighting how unserious the Republican party has become about actually legislating. This is the party that can’t even keep the government open, shutting it down three times in just over one year.

Climate change is the greatest challenge of the 21st century, and the most important economic and national security threat facing not only our country but the world in general. McConnell will not hold any hearings elucidating the threats facing us or discussing the relative costs and benefits put forward in the GND proposal. No, he instead wants to use it as a political cudgel while maintaining the GOP’s climate change denialism.

The youth of our country see climate change for the threat it really is and know they will be the ones living with its consequences. They will look at McConnell’s actions as once again reflecting his party’s lack of seriousness in dealing with what they see as their future. It will confirm their prior beliefs that the party’s only constituents are nativists and the 1%. And it will confirm their belief, most recently expressed overwhelmingly in 2018, that the Republicans simply can not be trusted to actually govern.