The Green New Deal’s Disastrous First Week

By Kyle Smith

How bad is the debut of the Green New Deal looking a week later? “Dead on arrival” makes it sound better than it is. It’s more like Zima meets Green Lantern times Bill Simmons’s HBO show. It’s such a disaster that Democrats and their media allies are calling Mitch McConnell a nefarious schemer for proposing to allow them to vote on their own idea. A party whose loudest voice avers that we’re 144 months from the end of the world if we don’t “address climate change” (and that was almost a month ago!) is saying, “Hey, let’s not slam the pedal to the metal and rush this thing all the way to the voting-on-a-nonbinding-resolution phase this year.” The GND got pummeled, pureed, and pantsed from left, right, and center. Bloomberg’s Noah Smith: “The Green New Deal Would Spend the U.S. Into Oblivion.” Jonathan Chait of New York: “The Green New Deal Is a Bad Idea, Not Just a Botched Rollout.” USA Today’s deputy editorial-page editor catalogued “Green New Deal’s 55 promises that have little to do with climate change: The full list.” “A deeply unserious proposal to tackle climate change,” ruled The Economist. Jonathan Swan of Axios: “We’ve been talking to Trump’s political advisors, it’s like Christmas and Hanukkah and every other holiday has arrived. I’ve never seen them so joyful and full of glee. They’re gonna elevate this and talk about it til the cows come home.” Under the headline, “Democrats, Debt and Double Standards,” Paul Krugman advised the Left on February 11, “Don’t let the deficit scolds scare you into thinking small,” but upon further reflection one day later said of progressives, “Their agenda still needs to be tax-and-spend, not just spend” and deficit-scolded them: “Progressives should be thinking about how to pay for their policies. So it’s a source of mild concern that I keep hearing that heterodox economics — specifically Modern Monetary Theory — says that we don’t have to worry about where the money will come from.” Somehow the Democrats managed to create a shiny, magical rainbow-colored unicorn and immediately impale themselves on it. How did this Hindenburg-crashes-into-the-Titanic-and-unleashes-Chernobyl situation happen? A couple of reasons are apparent. The first is the Dems’ obvious and growing Ocasio-Cortez problem. I stress that it is not I who want her to be reined in. I want her on every front page, every podcast, every news program. I want her to host the Grammys. I want her to be the newest Avenger. The more she talks, the better for conservatives...MORE