CHRIS HAYES, “THE NATION”: Good evening, Keith.
OLBERMANN: Why did “The Washington Post” let us get lectured about science and politics by someone who quit her only state office, and has a pastor who runs these precautionary exorcisms on her so she can stave off witchcraft.
HAYES: I thought it was a really atrocious decision on the part of “The Washington Post” to run this op-ed. What exactly it contributed to the debate-there are people like Greg Mankiw, who worked in the Bush White House, an economist at Harvard. He’s a very conservative guy. He strongly opposes the cap and trade. He wants to see a carbon tax. There is a debate to be had.
But to give over your op-ed page to someone who makes, essentially a conspiracy claim, it would be like if they turned it over to someone who wanted to argue that 9/11 was an inside job. “The Washington Post” would never, in a million years, do that and they shouldn’t be doing this.
OLBERMANN: From Mrs. Palin’s point of view, from the GOP point of view, is this at all about getting elected anymore, or is this just kind of political cover for big business? Keeping the country safe from polluters for another hour, another month, another year, whatever it is they can manage?
HAYES: Luckily, they go hand in hand. I actually think what’s motivating Palin-and you can actually see, she has moved, you know, in the direction of the conspiracy theorists on this issue. What’s motivating her is the fact that the polling on this is really disturbing, because it has become an article of faith among the right wing base that this is a grand socialist conspiracy to usher in state control.
So I think she’s really, as she is want to do, pandering to that base right now. I think what’s driving that kind of op-ed, more than any kind of business shilling, is the fact that it has become one of these issues, like the birth certificate, that you can sort of win points with the base with.
OLBERMANN: And by the way, the video we’re seeing right now, that was taken in July in Washington, D.C. All right, that’s-bad joke, I’m sorry. But let’s put all these points together now about the predilections of the far right and what they believe and what they don’t. What is the Palin explanation for polar ice melting, which she acknowledges. If it is witchcraft, why has she not sent Pastor Moothy (ph) to fix it. A slightly more serious version of that, and if this is not man-made, if it is part of the right-wing agenda, if it all should be theocratically interpreted, if it’s all in God’s hands, how come Sister Sarah, with her direct line to God, has not instructed God to fix this?
HAYES: You know, what’s really interesting about this op-ed is that it’s not even internally logically consistent conspiracy mongering. There are two alternate theories of the conspiracy the denialists make. One is, yes, the world is warming, but it is not caused by humans. The other, the science that says the world is warming is fake and part of the conspiracy. And she endorses both. Those both cannot obtain.
The fact of the matter is, she governs the one state in the union that is most immediately seeing the effects of climate change. The permafrost is actually melting. There are houses that have cracked because of it in the state of Alaska. And because of that, she was forced to kind of acknowledge the fact that warming is happening. She can’t have it both ways.
And the editors of “The Washington Post” didn’t see fit to make any kind of intervention, to at least have a logically consistent piece of work on their pages.
OLBERMANN: Which brings up the idea of an end game for the GOP and Palin. What is the end game? Let’s say they are 100 percent right, that climate-gate exists, that this is a scam, that changes in climate are natural. Do they have a plan for how to keep the government together, to criminalize abortion during the rapture and the upcoming ice age and/or universal sweat lodge, whichever comes first?
HAYES: You know, I don’t know what the right-wing government’s plan is. But I will say, on an extremely serious note, that this-you know, we’ve talked about this in a million different ways-and Al Gore-and there are a lot of messengers who are better at this than I am. But it’s hard to over-state the stakes right now, in Copenhagen, in the climate change legislation moving through Congress. We are at a sort of pivotal moment in the fate of the Earth, but also as a test of the moral fabric of American democracy. And history is going to look extremely, extremely unkindly on this op-ed and the people that are using their platform to sort of propagate this very monstrous deception.
