Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) has done something we wouldn’t usually expect from a Republican: Sympathize with China, and otherwise consider international affairs from the perspective of a country not friendly to the United States. On the other hand, this does involve undermining the Obama administration on climate change.
Barton, one of the GOP members of Congress visiting the Copenhagen conference for the purpose of telling delegates that America won’t pass cap-and-trade, told Politico yesterday : “I don’t consider what China is doing to be obstruction, I consider it to be reality.”
“They are not going to, all of a sudden, put aside all of the technology and economic development they are doing just to meet some political goal in the West… I don’t hold it against them,” he added. “What would we have done in 1850 if England, France and Germany said… ‘You can’t build factories’? We would have told them to go jump in a lake.”
DCCC spokesman Ryan Rudominer put out a statement lambasting Barton and the GOP for siding with another country against America: “Republicans joined the Taliban in cheering when the U.S. failed to land the Olympics, they talk down any good economic news and now we have leading House Republicans siding with China and against America while abroad. Unfortunately, for the American people, today’s Republican Party does not hesitate to throw America under the bus if the establishment thinks it will help return them to the failed policies of President Bush that left our economy in shambles.”
