After the Trump years, it’s much more difficult to talk about a fixed GOP ideology, but it’s fair to say that the following concepts are sacrosanct:
- Regulations on business are always bad, because they unnecessarily drive up costs and substitute the government’s ideas of justice for the dictates of the free market.
- Tax increases are always bad, because they reduce both investment and consumption, make products and services more expensive, and divert resources from a productive private sector to a clueless government.
With climate change, the problem for the GOP is that, if you really want to address the issue, you need to pick at least one of these two options. Is it any wonder that they simply prefer to call climate change a hoax?