As I have written here previously, Obama’s global warming tax is an even bigger, and therefore riskier, stab at the politically disastrous BTU tax that failed in the last Democratic president’s first budget. Back then, Democrats held healthy majorities in both houses of Congress — majorities that were wiped out the next year, thanks — according to Al Gore — to the BTU debacle. As I have also written, it will be Democrats, not Republicans, who kill this most recent iteration.

Monday’s Congressional Quarterly has an article (h/t Benny Peiser) presaging this familiar outcome, which is about as unpredictable as professional wrestling, so long as business does not succumb to the administration’s effort to sell them window insurance as a threat to some holdouts (the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federationn of Independent Business, the National Association of Manufacturers) to spare the administration the political fight over trying to impose it.

Just as the Democrats have telegraphed their (rightful) fear over such a fight, they are also terrified of being tagged with having imposed an even bigger disaster through an EPA rulemaking. It’s still theirs. Why do you think they labored so hard to get Bush to take ownership before he left office? Hold your position, lads, they’re trying to tell you something, and it’s that they don’t have what it takes to make this happen.