Eat The Press

Schwarzenegger Disses Inhofe As "Backward" and From "The Stone Age" On MTP, But Lets The Bush Administration Off The Hook

Huffington Post |  Rachel Sklar |  Posted Sunday November 26, 2006 at 11:58 AM

On today's "Meet The Press," California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger dismissed the anti-global warming rhetoric of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, who said global warming was based on "phony science" and called it "the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people." Schwarzenegger dismissed Inhofe's comments as as "backward-thinking" and from "the Stone Age," asserting that global warming was scientifically-proven fact and saying that "we can slow it down or we can stop it, but only if everyone is working together." Watch it here:

It should be noted, however, that Schwarzenegger's remarks were in response to Tim Russert's question about whether anti-environmentalist people like Inhofe were detrimental to the Republican party (well, actually he said "what will those kinds of statements do to the Republican party?" but we'll read between those careful lines here). Schwarzenegger downplayed the responsibility of the GOP, saying "I don't think it does much to the Republican party...the key thing for us is to not to pay any attention to those things." But Schwarzenegger failed to note that the GOP has been doing nothing BUT "paying attention to those things" with the continued tenure of Inhofe, who made the "hoax" comment in 2003, and who was kept in his post by the Bush administration for the past three years, to be replaced by replaced by Dem Senator Barbara Boxer (Ca.) only following the Democratic sweep in the midterm elections. Without naming names, Schwarzenegger rejected the Bush administration's inaction on the environment, noting that "the states in the United States are not waiting anymore for the federal government to provide leadership...we're going off on our own." Yet neither Russert nor Schwarzenegger held the President Bush or his administration accountable for their anti-environmental, selectively-scientific, head-in-the-sand position on global warming.