Pondering the Pundits

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

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Eugene Robinson: Thanks to Biden, the U.S. has gotten back into the fight against climate change

The Biden administration can’t stop global warming alone. But leadership matters.

The world’s richest and most powerful country is back in the fight against climate change. That is hugely important news for everyone already on the planet, and for our grandchildren yet to come.

The executive orders President Biden signed Wednesday will not, by themselves, solve the climate crisis. The high-powered White House team he put in charge of climate policy — led by Climate Coordinator Gina McCarthy and Climate Envoy John F. Kerry, the first people to hold these new roles — has no magic wand to make greenhouse gases go away. But we now have a better chance of avoiding worst-case environmental ruin, and we have a better chance of seeing the U.S. economy thrive in the inevitable shift toward clean energy. [..]

Biden promises a return to sanity. One of his first official acts last week was to rejoin the Paris climate agreement, which sets voluntary targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. On Wednesday, he signed executive orders designed to make climate an “essential element” of foreign policy and national security. Among a host of other measures, Biden has declared a moratorium on new oil and natural gas leases on federal lands, ordered federal agencies to procure electricity from renewable sources and decreed that the government will buy a fleet of zero-emission vehicles.

None of that will begin to solve the global climate crisis — but the leadership it represents will help more than skeptics realize.

Karen Tumulty: The GOP struck a bad bargain. That’s how it got stuck with Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The Republicans’ unwillingness to confront extremist forces within their party is not only unseemly but dangerous.

Donald Trump has departed Washington, but he has left behind a new set of rules for Republicans. One of them is that words and deeds, no matter how reckless or disconnected from the truth, carry no consequences.

Which is how the party wound up with Marjorie Taylor Greene, a dangerous loon whom the voters of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District decided to send to the U.S. House. [..]

But the predictable outcome, given the general mind-set of Republicans these days, is that such a drive would only elevate her as a martyr and bring wails of “cancel culture” from the prime-time pundits on Fox News.

She already is styling herself as a fever-swamp version of Joan of Arc. During the House debate on Trump’s impeachment — a proceeding that was nationally televised — Greene delivered her remarks while wearing a mask emblazoned with the word “CENSORED,” in protest of Twitter’s decision to suspend her for 12 hours for posting incendiary and false material about the election.

The real blame here, however, should rest with Republican leaders.

Amanda Marcotte: Forget about a GOP crack-up: Republicans rally around a defeated Trump because they understand power

Sorry, but the GOP won’t tear themselves apart — they’re too attached to power to let Trump and QAnon break them up

File it under too good to be true: The much-anticipated great Republican crack-up is not coming.

Last weekend, the Washington Post ran a story headlined, “Trump jumps into a divisive battle over the Republican Party — with a threat to start a ‘MAGA Party.'” It focused on the internal battle between the (relatively few) Republicans who are angry about Donald Trump inciting an insurrection on the Capitol and the more numerous Republicans who are gung-ho about this turn towards fascism and cannot wait to push it further. This followed earlier reporting about a “[b]itter split GOP” promising “Republicans in open warfare” and similar reporting from the New York Times promising that “bitter infighting underscores the deep divisions” in the GOP.  [..]

I was skeptical, believing as I do that there are three inevitabilities in life: Death, taxes, and that Republicans are far too attached to power to demobilize.

They may believe that there’s an international cabal of blood-drinking Satanist pedophiles, but Republicans aren’t so dumb as to think that there’s anything to be gained from third parties or withholding their votes altogether. That level of self-defeating stupidity is a solidly progressive flaw. Republicans know that power means winning elections and winning elections means sticking together. That is how it always is and always shall be, or at least until they can end this whole “holding elections” business altogether.

Elizabeth Rosenthal: Yes, It Matters That People Are Jumping the Vaccine Line

When hospital administrators and politicians’ spouses get immunized before people more at risk, it undermines confidence in the system.

The Biden administration’s much-needed national strategy to end the Covid-19 pandemic includes plans to remedy the chaotic vaccination effort with “more people, more places, more supply.” The Federal Emergency Management Agency will open more vaccination sites, the government will buy more doses and more people will be immunized. Still, by all estimates the demand for vaccines will far exceed the supply for months to come.

For weeks Americans have watched those who are well connected, wealthy or crafty “jump the line” to get a vaccine, while others are stuck, endlessly waiting on hold to get an appointment, watching sign-up websites crash or loitering outside clinics in the often-futile hope of getting a shot.

To eliminate this knock-out-your-neighbor race to score a vaccine, the administration needs to find ways to build trust in the system. It will take more than “more people, more places, more supply” to end the Darwinian competition and restore confidence and order.

Michael Tomasky: Why a Trump Third Party Would Be a Boon for Democrats

We really have room for only two major parties at a time in the United States.

Former President Donald Trump reportedly wants to form a new political party. For the first time in my sentient life, I say: Proceed, Mr. Trump. As he may or may not know, what he would almost certainly accomplish is to ensure that Democrats held the White House and the House of Representatives for as long as his party existed. [..]

One should never say never on these matters. The Whigs split in the early 1850s when their internal divisions over slavery became unbridgeable, which helped lead to that decade’s multiparty mayhem. That “mayhem” led to the rise of a new two-party system and, in 1860, elected the savior of the Republic. So it has happened. Most recently, about 165 years ago. (The Bull Moose Party, by the way, fizzled out in six years.)

But Mr. Trump would basically be creating a party that would make Democratic dominance much more likely.

He probably doesn’t know all this. Or maybe he does, and still wants to do it. If the latter, it would be what the Republicans so richly deserve for embracing someone who wasn’t really one of them to begin with and who practically has shaken our democracy to its core with their acquiescence.