OPINION:
If you watch them long enough, leftists will almost always acknowledge that their policies don’t work.
They don’t verbalize it or offer any confessions, but they do reverse themselves, often as discreetly as they can. Sometimes, they even run counter to the results of their own poor leadership.
We saw a case of the latter in the recent Virginia elections.
Incoming Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, ran on an economic message of improving “affordability” despite having served in Congress for most of President Biden’s administration, much of which was spent at war with our own domestic energy supply. An ardent supporter of that war, Ms. Spanberger backed every terrible Biden policy that contributed to the runaway inflation in the first place.
In recent months, while President Trump has been busy fixing the economy that Mr. Biden damaged, Ms. Spanberger ironically managed to turn the fruits of her poor decisions into the centerpiece of her campaign. She made the misleading claim that she could alleviate the cost-of-living concerns she helped create. Unfortunately for the people of the commonwealth, including me, she will now be able to implement more of her awful ideas.
For one, the governor-elect has promised that when she takes the oath of office in January, she will bring Virginia back into the multistate Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. This will impose a carbon tax on the heads of her constituents to the tune of about $500 million annually, increasing the cost of virtually everything.
So much for affordability, but you knew that was just a campaign slogan for her anyway.
To go back to the original point, another way leftists acknowledge they have been wrong is to reverse themselves and hope no one notices them doing it.
That’s happening right now in Colorado and California. In each of those two states, leftists are attempting to destroy fossil fuel companies. Meanwhile, the leftist state government is simultaneously forced to acknowledge it needs the energy those firms generate.
In a case that may soon be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, the city of Boulder, along with two Colorado counties and a gang of activist environmentalist lawyers, is suing two oil companies, demanding that they pay for alleged climate-related increases in government expenditures. (Incidentally, the oil companies have asked the court to take up the case.) At the same time, one of the original environmental lawyers has publicly admitted that it is, in fact, a way to implement a backdoor carbon tax on consumers.
The end goal of the activists, of course, is to eliminate the use of all energy derived from abundant natural resources underground.
While this is happening in Boulder, the state of Colorado is behaving in almost the exact opposite way by trying to delay the closure of a coal-fired power plant because state officials are afraid there won’t be enough energy for the winter if it shuts down.
“Gov. Jared Polis has spent most of his time in office pushing to accelerate Colorado’s transition away from fossil fuels in favor of more climate-friendly ways of generating electricity,” reported KRCC of Colorado Public Radio. “His administration, however, is now intervening to keep a coal-fired power plant running in Pueblo.”
It seems you can’t heat a house with environmental rhetoric, no matter how hot the air gets.
The same dynamic is playing out in California, where hipster doofus Gov. Gavin Newsom has joined a long line of lefties who hate and attack energy companies.
Local and state environmental goons slapped the Valero Refining Co. with a record $82 million fine for operations at its Benicia refinery in Northern California, and state officials were shocked to learn that the facility would be closing as a result. By spring, the region is expected to lose approximately 145,000 barrels of gasoline and diesel daily, which accounts for about 8% of the total statewide output.
This is where they already have the highest gas prices in the country. Some are now predicting $8-per-gallon prices because of these insane leftist policies.
When presented with intractable evidence of the failure of their own ideology, leftists panicked and are now trying a last-ditch ploy to keep the hated gasoline flowing. It has been widely reported that officials in Mr. Newsom’s administration are seeking another private sector buyer for the Valero plant to ensure its continued operation.
That’s the pattern of the left: They break what works, blame everyone else and then scramble when reality closes in.
They will never say so out loud, of course, but they acknowledge it every day with their actions if you pay attention.
Whether it’s energy, affordability or basic economic competence, their ideology consistently collides with the real world, and the real world always wins.
• Tim Murtaugh is a Washington Times columnist and founder of Line Drive Public Affairs. He served as a senior adviser on the 2024 Trump campaign and as communications director on the 2020 Trump campaign.
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