One Year On…

One year on and its not looking so good for Obama. How the political land-scape can change in a year..

The Democrats are in deep political shock this morning as a truck-driving lawyer, Scott Brown took the prized seat of Massachusetts.

Scott Brown’s previous greatest claim to fame was winning Cosmopolitan’s America’s Sexiest Man competition in June 1982.

Now he has changed America’s political landscape.

The seat – held for nearly half a century by Senator Edward Kennedy – was considered a Democratic strong-hold.

Importantly it means that the Democrats have lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Health care could be out the window and so could any legislation on climate change.

Make no mistake Brown may be a former male model but his policies are anything but pretty.

Whilst Brown had made a core part of his campaign to oppose Obama’s health care bill, Brown is also a climate change sceptic who does not believe in man-made global warming, who opposes a federal cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions.

Just over a month ago, the Boston Globe reported how Brown had “visited the home of a voter in Harvard, Jack Farren, who asked him, “Do you think that whole global warming thing is a big fraud?’’

The Globe reported how “Brown’s answer was illustrative, in that he did not reject the fraud theory.”

The paper said: “It’s interesting. I think the globe is always heating and cooling,’’ he said. “It’s a natural way of ebb and flow. The thing that concerns me lately is some of the information I’ve heard about potential tampering with some of the information.’’”

“Brown continued, saying: “I just want to make sure if in fact . . . the earth is heating up, that we have accurate information, and it’s unbiased by scientists with no agenda. Once that’s done, then I think we can really move forward with a good plan.’’”

Denial. Delay. Doubt. Those tactics could have come out of any Exxon-funded sceptic, or from any oil-man himself.

It is not surprising that Brown is also supported by the sceptic websites that push the usual garbage about climate change being a “fraud”  or a “new religion” pushed by “eco-zealots”.

Oh by the way, before we think that Brown’s policies will really go down well in liberal Massachusetts, he also supports water-boarding of terrorism suspects.

Meanwhile the Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski is expected to put forward a proposal that would seek to prevent for a vote as early as today that would seek to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

A show of support for Murkowski’s proposal would be another personal humiliation for Obama. It also threatens to remove a fall-back position if Congress fails to pass a climate change law.

“It’s a highly political move, and a highly hazardous one to our health and the environment,” retorted Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader at a conference in New York. “If this senator succeeds, it could keep Congress from working constructively in a bipartisan manner to pass clean energy legislation this year.”

They say a week can be a long time in politics, so a year can seem like a life-time.