When news broke Tuesday night that a group of elder GOP statesmen have a plan for a conservative-friendly carbon tax, suffice it to say it raised some eyebrows.
The deal would apply a border adjustment to level the playing field and let Exxon et al off the hook for tobacco settlement-like lawsuits and swap the Clean Power Plan and the EPA’s remand to regulate CO2 for a rising $40/ton price on carbon. It may or may not be well received by greens, but it at least provides some political cover for those on the right who might be brave enough to acknowledge the fact that climate change is man-made and who actually do believe in free-market, conservative solutions.
Deniers, though, were obviously none too thrilled. James Delingpole had a quick rant about it at Breitbart, where he assumed to know Ronald Reagan better than George Shultz, who is part of team carbon tax. Given that Shultz was Reagan’s secretary of State, this is just as believable as anything else Delingpole writes.
Over at the Koch’s Daily Caller, Koch operative Michael Bastasch talked to former Koch lobbyist and current president of Koch’s American Energy Alliance Tom Pyle. Pyle was against the plan, saying that swapping regulations for a carbon tax would be a “bad deal.”
Newsbusters took issue with the AP calling the group “GOP senior statesmen,” which is an odd criticism given the fact that two of the signers are former GOP secretaries of State and others held similarly high-level cabinet positions in GOP administrations. It literally could not get any more “senior statesmen” than senior citizens who were served in a Republican White House as secretary of State.
Anyway, despite all this resistance, the allure of cutting government regulations and sending Americans a check every year should certainly entice at least the portion of the GOP that’s not totally controlled by the Kochs.
But does the plan have a chance?
In the words of Chuck Woolery and other tweeting deplorables and conservatives doing their best Michael Scott impression, given the power of the Kochs in this administration (not to mention Putin), unfortunately the answer may be “NO NO NO.”