'I think you have to focus on the American economy,' John Barrasso said. | John Shinkle/POLITICO GOP climate strategy: Focus on jobs

Republican leaders have a clear strategy for combating President Barack Obama’s climate agenda: Don’t talk about the science.

Just as top Republicans have called for their party to rebrand itself by avoiding rhetoric that alienates minorities, young voters and women, key GOP lawmakers are trying to stay out of the long-running debate about whether global warming is real — a discussion that has often included biblical references or claims that scientists are committing a giant hoax.


Instead, Republicans want to hit Obama where they’re convinced he’s most vulnerable: fears that his climate policies will destroy jobs and make energy prices skyrocket.

( Also on POLITICO: GOP options on climate limited)

“I think you have to focus on the American economy,” said Sen. John Barrasso, the fourth-ranking Senate Republican, while responding Wednesday to a reporter’s question about climate science. “The costs of the regulations are real. And the benefits are unknown.”

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) similarly danced around a science question Wednesday during a question-and-answer session with reporters.

“Well, our argument with the president right now is he’s picking winners and losers, he’s harming innovation and there’s going to be a direct assault” on jobs, McCarthy said when asked whether Republicans want to debate climate science.

The jobs-centric rhetoric is no accident, GOP consultant Mike McKenna said — although he noted that many Republicans won’t go along with that approach.

“This is a strategy that leadership wants to take, leadership wants to take, especially in the House,” McKenna said. “Rank and file are perfectly willing to talk about the underlying science.”

And so are Democrats like Obama, who are eager to paint Republicans as the anti-science party. “We don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society,” the president said Tuesday during his climate policy address at Georgetown University.

A day later, Barrasso rebutted Obama by turning to jobs.

“He kind of talked about the Flat Earth Society,” the Wyoming senator said. “You know, we have a very flat economy and it’s because of the president’s unwillingness to help us create jobs in this country.”

Of course, not every Republican seems to have gotten the memo.

Case in point: Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), perhaps the leading critic of climate change science in Congress, took to the Senate floor this week to challenge Obama’s climate proposals as well as the entire notion that the Earth is warming. In a speech Wednesday he cited the “Climategate” controversy, which involved conservatives’ accusations that scientists around the world are falsifying their research to make it appear that temperatures are rising.

At a hearing last week, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) challenged Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on the idea that the globe is warming, with the lawmaker contending that “the temperature has stayed steady for 16 years now.”

“That’s in dispute,” countered Moniz, a nuclear physicist and a former energy lab director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Indeed, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show an overall trend of rising temperatures. In January, NOAA reported that 2012 had been the warmest year on record in the lower 48 states, and that globally it was the 10th-warmest since record-keeping began in 1880.

In April, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) alluded to Genesis to make the point that not everyone believes climate change is man-made.

“I would point out that if you’re a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change, and that certainly wasn’t because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy,” he said.

Other Republicans are happy to distance themselves from that kind of talk.

“I’m not a denier when it comes to whether or not we’re seeing a changing climate,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has nonetheless challenged the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, said Wednesday. “I believe that we are.”

The Republican divide was evident during the 2012 presidential primary, in which former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum denounced climate science as “bogus” and mocked warnings about the “dangers” of carbon dioxide pollution. “Tell that to a plant, how dangerous carbon dioxide is,” he said at an energy summit in March 2012.

Another GOP presidential hopeful, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, warned during the campaign that Republicans attack science at their peril.

“When you make comments that fly in the face of what 98 out of 100 climate scientists have said, when you call to question evolution, all I’m saying is that in order for the Republican Party to win, we can’t run from science,” Huntsman said at a September 2011 debate.

The aftermath of 2012 has included even more introspection from Republicans about how to widen their appeal. At this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, for example, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush warned activists that “way too many people believe Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker … and the list goes on.”

Democrats have been eager to use climate science as a wedge.

Organizing for Action — an advocacy group run by former Obama campaign staff — has started an effort to both advocate for Obama’s climate strategy as well as highlight members of Congress who question or deny climate science.

Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has likewise used the science card against his Republican rival, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who conducted a two-year investigation into state funding of former University of Virginia climate researcher Michael Mann.

And on Tuesday, after Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) accused Obama of waging a “war on coal,” Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) countered that Republicans were engaged in a “war on science” — although McConnell hadn’t mentioned the science at all and instead called Obama’s plan a “unilateral economic surrender.”

Of course, a parallel exists among some Obama’s supporters who are looking to downplay the economics of climate policy in favor of focusing on the environmental and health benefits. On Tuesday, POLITICO and other news outlets reported on a set of talking points issued by a coalition of Obama supporters who urged advocates not to “lead with straight economic arguments” when talking up the president’s climate strategy.

Other Obama backers aren’t afraid to make the economic argument by highlighting businesses that support his climate plan. Administration officials have also stressed the enormous costs that states and cities face because of storms, droughts, floods and other events that they have pinned on a changing climate exacerbated by greenhouse gas emissions.

Some Republicans have found a way to blend the science and jobs arguments.

On Monday, Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — including Barrasso — demanded that EPA provide more data on global temperatures and charged that Obama was making inaccurate statements. But they also pivoted back to the economy.

“To promote his global warming agenda, the president has stated that ‘temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago,’” wrote committee ranking member David Vitter (R-La.) and members including Barrasso and Inhofe. They added, “The American people deserve to know if the president has the facts straight, particularly as EPA presses ahead with zealous regulations that will drive up the price of electricity and make it harder for American workers to compete in the world economy.”

McKenna said Republicans can’t avoid science entirely, saying an opposition strategy focused solely on the economic impacts of regulations defies logic and is doomed to fail.

“If you really believe or accept that global warming is a legitimate, real, immediate threat, then there’s no amount of money you wouldn’t pay to avoid it,” he said. “But if it’s not, then you can talk about the economics all you want.”