Every serious candidate for public office who has already held public office has something in her or his record to keep out of the public eye. That is usually some big screw-up, an on-the-record flame-out or a policy that had an unfortunate outcome. In Mitt Romney's case, however, what he'd like everyone to forget is something he did right.
As Brad Johnson writes, these days Romney is saying:
... [W]e have made a mistake is what I believe, in saying that the EPA should regulate carbon emissions. I don’t think that was the intent of the original legislation, and I don’t think carbon is a pollutant in the sense of harming our bodies.
That wasn't Romney's stance when he was governor of Massachusetts. Rather the opposite, according to Sarah Bufkin:
While in office, Romney pushed state regulations aimed at enforcing emissions standards on power plants for four “pollutants,” including carbon dioxide. Here is an excerpt from the regulation, 310 CMR 7.29, as it stood in May of 2004, over a year after Romney took office:
The purpose of 310 CMR 7.29 is to control emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), mercury (Hg), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2) and fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) (together “pollutants“) from affected facilities in Massachusetts. 310 CMR 7.29 accomplishes this by establishing output-based emission rates for NOx, SO2 and CO2 and establishing a cap on CO2 and Hg emissions from affected facilities.
After the Department of Environment instigated the broader regulation 310 CMR 7.29 to clean up the state’s “Filthy Five” power plants in 2001, the Romney administration took the initiative on developing the emission limits and implementation schedule for carbon dioxide.
And it wasn't just words. In 2003, Romney personally told Pacific Gas & Electric that their request for a two-year delay in extending the life of the dirty Salem Harbor coal-fueled power plant was out of line:
“If the choice is between dirty power plants or protecting the health of the people of Massachusetts, there is no choice in my mind,” said Romney. “I will always come down on the side of public health.”
That situation at Salem Harbor didn't get resolved until recently. But that doesn't change the fact that Romney was greenish on regulating carbon emissions, even supporting a state cap-and-trade plan.
Attracting voters imbued with the Foxaganda version of environmental consciousness means Romney has to hope they pay attention to what he says now rather than what he actually did for four years as governor. He was right then and wrong now. That doesn't exactly give him an edge against candidates who were wrong then and wrong now. But it says so much about the cohort of voters he hopes to attract in the primaries that he'd rather blend in on this issue than stand in contrast to his rivals.