Two (possibly three) members of Congress in Texas lost their seats in the Republican (and outside money) tsunami that swept the country-Rep. Chet Edwards, Ciro Rodriguez, and Solomon Ortiz – whose race is at this point still too close to call, but he trails his opponent by several hundred votes. Many in the punditocracy have tried to come up with one common denominator to explain the Republican tidal wave, and some have settled on the vote on climate change legislation, HR 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) or Waxman-Markey. Politico jumped (the shark?) to this conclusion: “House Democrats who voted for the 2009 bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions – dubbed cap-and-tax by GOP opponents – had a terrible night.”
But this is widely debunked, first in this piece from Think Progress’s Wonk Room blog: (more…)
