February 01, 2021 11:46 AM UTC

Buck, Boebert Sign Looney Tunes Deb Haaland Letter

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• by: Colorado Pols

With GOP Rep. Doug Lamborn mostly laying low in an effort to avoid the donor backlash against pro-sedition lawmakers, Colorado’s two highest-profile Republicans left in office have become something of a yin and yang of one another: Rep. Ken Buck, saying his long goodbye from politics while emerging as an unlikely voice of reason regarding the 2020 elections, and Rep. Lauren Boebert anchoring the defiant “Trump Truther” wing of the GOP still carrying a torch for very much ex-President Donald Trump.

But despite the major disagreement between Buck and Boebert on the results of the 2020  election, the two managed to find common ground last week railing against Deb Haaland, President Joe Biden’s nominee to be the next Secretary of the Interior:

We write today urging the withdrawal of the nomination of Representative Deb Haaland (D-NM) as Secretary of the Interior. Nominating Representative Haaland is a direct threat to working men and women and a rejection of responsible development of America’s natural resources.

As a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Representative Haaland jumped at the opportunity to introduce the Green New Deal in the House, a so-called plan to “completely transform” our economy and that “goes farther than just calling for a ban on hydraulic fracturing.” The harmful effects of the Green New Deal are well-documented, but it includes eliminating air travel, responsible petroleum development, and the use of non-electric vehicles, costing each American family $65,000 and the United States $93 trillion annually.

Now folks, the “Green New Deal” is already something of an anachronism having been superseded by Biden’s own clean energy plan. But the contention in this purportedly serious letter to President Biden that the GND would have eliminated commercial aviation or banned non-electric vehicles–or for that matter the frequent allegation that cows would be banned due to their methane-y farts–is laughably unpersuasive. Fact-checkers have been shredding these silly claims ever since the Green New Deal was proposed over two years ago, but that hasn’t stopped them from being endlessly recycled on social media and by right-wing talking heads.

If the goal of this letter was to actually persuade Biden to reconsider Deb Haaland’s nomination as Interior Secretary, it’s worth fellow Republicans asking: why would Buck, Boebert, and this letter’s other dozen-odd signers make their case to the President with arguments everyone literate on the issue have been rolling their eyes at for two years?

Maybe it’s all they’ve got, but it feels not even trying. Do better, just to offer a debate worth having.