Rossputin.com Rational Thinking About Our World

Being married to an Australian and having lived “down under” for a brief time, I pay more attention than most Americans to Aussie politics.  A couple of years ago, Australian voters tossed out long-time Prime Minister John Howard basically because they were ready for something new, not because he was bad (like George W. Bush).  They replaced him and the Liberal Party (the more conservative of the two major parties) with Kevin Rudd of the Labour Party.

Rudd, like most leftists, is a believer in man-made global warming and in massive cap-and-trade/tax systems to deal with the “problem".

The Australian Senate was to vote on the implementation of a massive cap-and-tax system, but before the vote came up, there was a mini-revolution in Australian politics.

The then-current Liberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who supported Kevin Rudd’s massive taxation plan, was ousted in a 42-41 vote by Liberal senators and replaced with Tony Abbott, a man who is explicitly not a global warming “skeptic” but who is vehemently opposed to the carbon trading system.

After Abbott’s takeover, the carbon trading scheme went down in a 33-41 vote.

Obviously, all the US Republican senators together don’t have the power to stop anything if all the Democrats (and two Independents) stick together.  But in general, what a great lesson for American politicians.  It’s time to jettison those who would work with the left to slightly improve the worst legislation  in history and pass the second-worst legislation in history.

It’s time to jettison Snow, Graham, and probably McCain. Time to jettison Mary Bono, Mark Kirk, and their ilk from the House. (Kirk is running to replace Roland Burris’ Illinois senate seat.)

Abbott has said that the conservative coalition in Australia will not have a carbon tax as part of their platform in the 2010 elections.

Still, the alarmist Labour Party isn’t giving up. They plan to reintroduce legislation in February with modifications worked out with certain Liberal members of the Senate.  Abbott must hold off the Aussie version of RINOs and should spend the next two months explaining to the Australian public how enormous the damage to their economy would be should the measure pass.

Again, our senators can take a lesson from Abbott.  Even though he’s wrong about humans being an important factor in climate, he at least realizes that you can’t solve the problem by destroying the economy.  Our Democratic senators in particularly need to think about that sort of cost/benefit analysis not just with cap-and-tax, but also – or especially – with health care “reform".  I’m not holding my breath.