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GOP Blasts O’Malley for Saying Climate Change Fuels the Islamic State’s Rise

The GOP is blasting 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley for linking climate change and the Islamic State.

By David Francis

July 21, 2015, 12:31 PM

Martin O’Malley is a lot of things. He’s the former governor of Maryland. He’s an amateur musician who is challenging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. But according to Republicans, one thing he is not an expert on is the Islamic State.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin, O’Malley, who is running far behind Clinton in early polls, said climate change helped to fuel the rise of the militant group, which currently controls large parts of Iraq and Syria.

“One of the things that preceded the failure of the nation-state of Syria, the rise of ISIS, was the effect of climate change and the mega-drought that affected that region, wiped out farmers, drove people to cities, created a humanitarian crisis [that] created the … conditions of extreme poverty that has led now to the rise of ISIL and this extreme violence,” the Maryland Democrat said, using two different acronyms for the Islamic State.

This argument is in line with similar sentiments by the White House. Officials for President Barack Obama’s administration argue that the lack of economic opportunity plays a big part in the extremist group’s rapid ascent. According to this theory, young men join the Islamic State, in part, because they can’t find jobs.

That argument does not go over well with Republicans, who accuse the Obama administration of downplaying the Islamic State’s commitment to global jihad. O’Malley’s statement got a similar response.

“Whether it’s the weak Obama-Clinton nuclear deal that paves the way for Iran to obtain an atomic bomb or Martin O’Malley’s absurd claim that climate change is responsible for ISIS, it’s abundantly clear no one in the Democratic Party has the foreign policy vision to keep America safe,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement early Tuesday morning.

O’Malley’s campaign manager Lis Smith welcomed the criticism.

“If Republicans want to have a debate about either foreign policy or science, we have a message for them: Bring it on. On both topics, they are trapped in the past,” Smith said.

In the GOP statement, Priebus signaled that for all of O’Malley’s other attributes, he also is not being considered as a top Republican threat. That’s a set of crosshairs reserved for Clinton.

“Hillary Clinton should immediately state whether or not she agrees with these extreme comments,” Priebus said.

Photo credit: Charlie Leight/Getty Images