Republican Party

Four Great Republican Environmental Leaders

Teddy Roosevelt was an early conservation, who fought even as a young man to help preserve Yellowstone National Park from commercial exploitation.  As President, he created the national forest system, TR created the Tongass and the Chugach forest reserves in Alaska. In Hawaii, he set several small islands aside as the Hawaiian Islands Bird Reservation, …

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Is EPA regulation of carbon dioxide anti-democratic?

There’s been a lot of noise from House Republicans (and others) about how EPA regulation of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act is somehow an end-run around Congress or anti-democratic.  But it is neither.

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GOP Postmodernism Continues Apace

It’s bad enough that Republicans have declared war on science, and war on facts: now they are declaring war on math.  Newt Gingrich says that the Congressional Budget Office should be abolished, mainly it will tell him things that he doesn’t like.  As Brian Beutler of TPM notes, any attempt to repeal health care reform …

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Should We Allow Development in National Parks?

If I were pressed to state my favorite place in the world, coming right at the top of the list would be the Wawona Hotel, in Yosemite National Park.  Not only is it inside Yosemite, but it is a historic hotel, originally built in 1879, and possessing all kinds of retro features as well as …

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(What Remains Of) The Conservative Mind Melts Down

Once upon a time, George Will had a reputation as the thinking person’s conservative.  No more.  He’s not only a climate denier, but a couple of weeks ago he smeared Elizabeth Warren with a kind of red-baiting that I haven’t seen since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now he’s at it again, sort of.  …

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Why Does the GOP Have Greens Seeing Red?

The peerless Ron Brownstein asks why are Republicans, even those in swing districts, going out of their way to attack the EPA and the environment generally.  His answers are interesting for the environmental movement. 1)  Enormous pressure for GOP caucus cohesion, especially in light of the retirement of Republican environmental stalwarts like former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert …

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Searching For EPA’s Poison Pill

For the third time this year, Republicans in Congress seem to be angling for a government shutdown.  Not only will there be disagreements on funding levels, but the House will insist on attaching riders to appropriations bills preventing agencies from doing various things.  I realize that this may come as a shock, but the House …

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The GOP Candidates on Energy (and Environment)

I’ve taken this information from the websites of some of the Republican contenders.  What they say about their policies and records may not be exactly objective, but it’s interesting to see how they’d like to be perceived on environment and energy.  Here are four takeaway points: Republican primary voters apparently don’t care very much about …

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How Do You Solve a Problem Like Conservative White Men? Ask the Ol’ Perfesser

Dave Roberts wants to know. Roberts alludes to a recent survey showing that conservative white men are the most likely group to be climate deniers.  (We can put this in the “knock-me-over-with-a-feather” department, although it would be interesting to see how this works with conservative white women).  More interestingly, the study (with assistance from Roberts) …

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Nostradamus, I Ain’t

On Friday, I predicted that Senate Republicans would side with Grover Norquist against Tom Coburn and block repeal of one of the egregious ethanol subsidies now polluting both our tax code and our country. Well, so much for that: most Senate Republicans did the right thing and voted to remove the subsidy.  In this case, …

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