The New Yorker has published a detailed account of this Congress' (now abandoned) attempts to pass a climate change bill, co-written by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. Problem was, Graham thought he could write this major bill without Fox News noticing.

While much of the GOP lurched back towards complete denial of man-made climate change in the past two years, Graham stayed interested, and the White House hoped he could rope in a few more moderate Republicans in the Senate. It never seemed very likely that Graham would carry his support to the end, though, because he's a senator from South Carolina in 2010. Wouldn't the political pressure to oppose a hippie clean-energy bill catch up to him at some point? Apparently Graham thought that if he just kept it on the down-low and passed a bill really really quickly, then Fox News would never know:

But, back in Washington, Graham warned Lieberman and Kerry that they needed to get as far as they could in negotiating the bill "before Fox News got wind of the fact that this was a serious process," one of the people involved in the negotiations said. "He would say, ‘The second they focus on us, it's gonna be all cap-and-tax all the time, and it's gonna become just a disaster for me on the airwaves. We have to move this along as quickly as possible.' "

Somehow, this intricate legislative strategy of "don't tell Fox News" fell apart, and Graham caved, and now we'll all die in a flood or ice storm or whatever it is that happens with this temperature-changey thing.

[via Think Progress]