Bill Maher hammers GOP on climate change: It's not why they suck, but 'who they're sucking'

Republican presidential hopefuls have twisted "zombie lies" to fit their purposes, Real Time host Bill Maher said on Friday, pointing out that they continue to deny climate change while half of their own constituents want to address the issue.

"Good luck, 'cause the zombie lies aren't for the voters -- they're for the donors who make their money killing the planet," he said. "The question is not why politicians suck more than ever; it's who they're sucking more than ever."

Whenever global warming is brought up, Maher observed, conservatives are quick to say, "I'm not a scientist" to dodge the topic.

"Jeb Bush says that. So does Marco Rubio," he noted. "John Boehner says, 'I'm not qualified to debate science.' And Rick Perry says, 'Oh my God, my hands are gone. Wait, they're in my pocket.' Oh Rick, of all the things you have to worry about, people mistaking you for a scientist should be very far down the list."

For his part, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and other Republicans try to play a trump card by bringing up a single Newsweek article from the 1970s as evidence that the scientific community was unanimously concerned about "global cooling," a theory that was ultimately debunked.

"But here's the thing about that Newsweek story: it didn't say there's an overwhelming consensus that felt the Earth was cooling," Maher said. "It said a few were floating that theory. Or as Mike Huckabee remembers it, 'All the literature at that time from the scientific community said that we were all going to freeze to death.'"

And while hoodwinking the voters, Maher said, top Republicans are wooing oil entrepreneurs like Charles and David Koch, who are plunging almost $1 billion into the upcoming presidential race.

"For that kind of money, Cruz and Bush and the rest of them will say anything," Maher argued. "It's what their fellow prostitutes in the sex industry call 'the girlfriend experience.'"

Watch Maher's commentary, as posted online on Friday, below.