I'm not going to defend these Republicans on their policies regarding other social issues or their defense spending, the destruction of the middle class, etc. This is not what I'm attempting to write about. But the point I am trying to make is that the Party of No has gone so off the rails that they are putting our very future at risk because it is politically expedient and they would rather see Obama fail, our Country fail than work towards a common good.
In the year and a half since Barack Obama was elected president, Republicans nationwide seem to have given up on the whole governing thing and chosen instead to play a long, rancorous game of “I’m More Conservative Than You Are.”
Even Reagan Wasn’t a Reagan Republican
This piece makes a very important point about how past Presidents passed important legislation and made historic decisions that would be seen now as far too liberal and a pox on their party. They would be unable to run for office now if they were running on their accomplishments because, well, these environmental issues would be deemed progressive nightmares and blights on our Country.
But in truth, we should be thankful that such laws were passed because they have done a great deal of good, regardless of what you think of the presidents who passed them or supported them.
So as we struggle to come to grips with the reality that is unfolding in the Gulf and we have a political battle of who is responsible for the nightmare, (Frank Rich wrote a very good piece about this by the way,Obama’s Katrina? Maybe Worse)
The Obama administration has been engaged with the oil spill from the start — however haltingly and inarticulately at times. It was way too trusting of BP but was never AWOL. For all the second-guessing, it’s still not clear what else the president might have done to make a definitive, as opposed to cosmetic, difference in plugging the hole: yell louder at BP, send in troops and tankers, or, as James Carville would have it, assume the role of Big Daddy? The spill is not a Tennessee Williams play, its setting notwithstanding, and it’s hard to see what more drama would add, particularly since No Drama Obama’s considerable talents do not include credible play-acting.
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Aside from saying no to Obama, the Republican Party has no ideas except Tea Party ideas, Rand Paul ideas. And as The Economist, hardly a liberal observer, put it, Paul’s views are those of “a genuine radical who believes in paring government down to the bone.”
The president of the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank, codified the mission in apocalyptic terms last weekend. The new American “culture war,” Arthur C. Brooks wrote in The Washington Post, is not “over guns, gays or abortion” but pits “the principles of free enterprise” against the “European-style statism” he accuses Obama of fomenting. It’s a war that takes no prisoners: the A.E.I. purged the former Bush speechwriter David Frum after he broke with the strict party line.
We must remind people that it was Republican Presidents who enacted important laws to protect open land and to keep our air clean and that they were actually successful and did not, as Republicans and Tea Party people would have you believe today, destroy business.
These are the things that CONSERVATIVE Presidents enacted and that we should be grateful and that we have to keep pushing for more sweeping environmental laws to keep further large scale disasters like the one in Gulf from happening ever again. Because it will.
And although the right likes to laugh and call Obama the next Carter, it seems that Obama is merely dealing with the outcome of ignoring the warnings that Carter gave in the late 70's while he was President. We should have been working from then on our "dependence on foreign oil" when we hit our own peak but it was too late once Reagan had become President and our Countries path was taken into other directions.
Some Environmental Law by Republican Presidents.
Nixon
On the domestic front, Nixon would be Democrat by today’s standards. He legislated like an environmentalist, signing the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act of 1970, and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act amendments of 1972, all while establishing new government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Council on Environmental Quality. He lowered the national speed limit to 55 miles per hour—the sort of one-size-fits-all, nanny-state solution that contemporary conservatives abhor.
Reagan
Support “market-based energy reforms”? In California, Reagan established the Air Resources Board to intervene in the market and fight smog; as president, he signed more wilderness-protections laws than any president before or since.
George H. W. Bush
He reauthorized the Clean Air Act and even signed the Immigration Act of 1990, a law that increased legal immigration to the U.S. by 40 percent and would do little to endear him to the far right’s anti-immigrant voices. And while the RNC’s purity test says that real Republicans must support “market-based energy reforms by opposing cap-and-trade legislation,” Bush actually pushed for and passed a cap-and-trade system to staunch acid rain, “overrul[ing] his advisers’ recommendation of an eight million-ton cut in annual acid rain emissions in favor of the ten million-ton cut advocated by environmentalists.” What’s that now? Strike four? Strike five?
George W. Bush
Finally, recent reports have revealed that Bush actually supported a cap-and-trade system to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, a message that was dulled by White House conservatives at the time but still managed to surface in a few contemporaneous news accounts.
So there it is, the Republican Party is so hell bent on taking out Obama and reclaiming political power that they will work against everything that their party used to stand for. The Republican Party used to stand for some common sense, it wasn't just about being antithetical to the opposition and acting in all stubbornness in order to make a President and his administration look bad.
Part of the responsibility to our planet is protecting her resources for future generations and that this does not go against Conservative principles. As someone here who I believe is very wise stated, there is no separating the economy and the environment.
And so they continue down this path of watering down Climate Legislation because they know they can.
It's another day, which must mean there is a new development in the climate world's most drama-packed storyline: just what will the Senate do or won't do on its climate and energy bill? On Friday, the story's most mercurial character, Sen. Lindsey Graham, added a new wrinkle, stripping the climate bill to just an electric utility industry tax. Graham thinks that by doing so a bill could muster the support of 60 Senators and that it would send the right market signals to prompt growth in nuclear power generation and renewable energy.
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Graham has been at the center of much of the drama. After working with Sens. Lieberman and Kerry for nine months on a comprehensive climate and energy bill that had a short-term target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, Graham pulled his support over a dispute with Senate leadership over when the bill would be given priority.
Reports are unclear how Graham would structure his utility only bill. It could be a carbon tax or an emissions trading system. He has made it clear that he wants to leave transportation out of the equation, saying that a gas tax is politically toxic.
Treehugger
And as the article goes on to say, Friendman implores Obama in the New York Times to use this unending nightmare to move the US off of Oil now!
It is time that we push not just progressive ideas but remind Republicans that their conservative fore-bearers would have seen the wisdom in such a move. Sadly, it's more about corporate rulers than doing what is right for the planet. So we have to make sure they know that whoever is on our side is on the side of putting future generations first and a sustainable future needs to be one that begins weaning this Country off of oil altogether.