The Republican plan to make Obama a one term President didn’t work. Whether House Republican leaders decide to change their completely obstructionist strategy remains to be seen, but just for fun let’s assume they abandon the scorched earth policy and try to work to get things done. This might sound like a stretch, but the Republicans got so shellacked last night that it is a real possibility, and Obama mentioned climate change kind of out of the blue in his acceptance speech. So, let’s look at some of the potential conservative leaders on the Republican side that could help move a bipartisan environmental policy forward.
In it’s the modern incarnation of the GOP the combination of green and red seems impossible. There are no Republicans in the 52 member Sustainable Energy and Environmental Coalition, and the environmental records of the most recent Republican President George W. Bush and legacy of ideological touchstone Ronald Reagan are abysmal. However, Nixon’s environmental record was stellar, and current Senators John Chafee, William Roth, John McCain have all pushed for climate change legislation at some point in their careers. It’s also worth remembering that cap-and-trade was conceived by free market zealots as much as by climate scienties in the 1980s. At the state level the green governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger suggest that conservative and green don’t have to be a contradiction. But these guys are old and are lukewarm on real change at best, is there any new blood on the right to push for environmental issues?
If there is some chance of meaningful Republican participation on environmental issues the Congressional endorsements made by the non-profit lobby group ConservAmerica might be the place to look. ConservAmerica (formally known as Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP)) has worked since 1994 to elect conservative and environmentally to high office in the US. For the 2012 election they endorsed 30 Republican candidates (22 incumbents) for the House of Representatives, and 3 for senate (two incumbents). To me this sounded like a lot, considering the obstruction of the last congress on environmental issues, but their endorsements only represent 6% of the total possible Republican candidates for the House that they could have endorsed. Moreover, they only endorsed eight non-incumbent candidates. Weak.
So how did they do? Not too bad it seems. Of the 33 House candidates endorsed, only 8 lost. Not too bad, considering that the arch-conservative Tea Party House members had a much tougher go on Tuesday, but with the exception of three wins, all the other winning ConservAmerica endorsements were incumbents. Two of the three Senate endorsements also lost including incumbent Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown. The other loss was in Hawaii which was an uphill battle in the heavily Democratic state.
Americans of all stripes need bipartisan action on environmental issues, especially getting serious about climate change. As long and exhausting as it was, environmental issues only came up briefly during the campaign at the end when Mother Nature brought Hurricane Sandy to as the October Surprise. Let’s hope that the new congress and green receptive Republicans whether newly elected or get it together and actually move forward.
