I have it on very good authority that at one time, and not all that long ago, Tailgunner Ted Cruz was a fairly run-of-the-mill, if undeniably smart, conservative lawyer. As the solicitor-general of Texas, this person told me, Cruz was an able advocate, albeit for positions with which I never would agree in a thousand years. However, then Ted Cruz went into elected politics, and now he's running for president, and that changes a feller. Ted Cruz, the politician, has fallen out of the wingnut tree and hit every branch on the way down.

Today's topic was the crisis of climate change. And, well, the Tailgunner did not disappoint.

There is a fundamental difference, which is in the name of global warming, you have politicians trying to impose trillions of dollars of cost on the world. In the I-95 Corridor, among the Washington elite, global warming is very popular because it makes you feel good about caring for the world. But I'll tell you, you know who I'm concerned about? I'm concerned about the single mom waiting tables right now, who for seven years of the Obama economy has been trapped in stagnation. Her wages have been stagnating. It's harder and harder to make ends meet. And what the Washington elites are trying to do is double her energy bill… If you show me a scientist that stops questioning science, I'll show you someone who isn't a scientist. And I'll tell you…why this has shifted. Look in the world of global warming. What is the language they use? They call anyone who questions the science—who even points to the satellite data—they call you a, quote, "denier." Denier is not the language of science. Denier is the language of religion. It is heretic. You are a blasphemer. It's treated as a theology. But it's about power and money. At the end of the day, it's not complicated. This is liberal politicians who want government power.

And this was after Cruz hosted a hearing, keyed to the ongoing climate talks in Paris, and to pitch himself to dimmer end of the Republican primary electorate as a Man Of Ideas. To this end he invited Important Conservative Voice Mark Steyn—yet another Canadian they can have back any time—to deliver the following Unified String Theory Of Wingnut Thought.

"We are planning now for global security threats a century hence, because the Maldives might have been swept away by water by then," Steyn said. "The entire population of the Maldives are Sunni Muslim, so they will fit in perfectly fine if they all move to this Brussels suburb that produced the shooters in Paris."

The subcommittee's little choo-choo having clearly jumped the track, it was left to the junior senator from Massachusetts, Ed Markey, to state the obvious.

"The only thing that requires a serious scientific investigation is why we are holding today's hearing in the first place."

C'mon, Markey. You're from Malden. You know why they held the hearing. Ted Cruz is running for president, and the Iowa caucuses are a little less than two months away, and the oil industry has been known to write big, fat checks for people willing to spoon out hogwash on their behalf.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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