Graham Deserves
Praise, Not Censure, for Climate Change Stance
By David Jenkins, REP vice
president for government and political affairs, and Chester Sansbury,
South
Carolina REP coordinator, published November 20, 2009, in
the Post and Courier in
Charleston, SC
Sen.
Lindsey Graham has been taking some heat since he stepped forward to
seek a bipartisan compromise on critical climate change and energy
security issues facing our country.
There have been expensive and misleading ad campaigns attacking Sen.
Graham, such as that launched by the American Energy Alliance -- a
shadowy, oil industry-financed group.
Attacks from vested interests trying to protect the status quo are
predictable and their motivations easily understood. Harder to
understand is the flak that Graham is getting from a vocal faction of
Republicans who have been led to believe that he has committed apostasy
by setting aside partisanship in order to solve climate and energy
problems that threaten America's future.
One of the most egregious examples is the Charleston County GOP
Executive Committee's recent vote to censure Sen. Graham.
Their complete rejection of Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment, "Thou
shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican," with regard to Graham is
an example of how radicalized some in the GOP have become.
To argue that Graham is not a conservative is absurd. Graham has a 90
percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, a 100
percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee and the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, and an "A" from the National Rifle Association.
A fact lost on the radicals is that Graham's constructive approach
virtually ensures that Democrat-crafted climate bills, such as the one
passed by the House in June, will be supplanted by more balanced
legislation that includes greater incentives for nuclear energy and
other types of domestic energy production.
Also escaping the radicals' attention is that cap-and-trade is a
Republican idea that has its roots in the Reagan administration.
Democrats once opposed establishing a marketplace to make it profitable
for companies to limit emissions. They favored a regulatory approach
with the strong arm of government dictating the outcome instead of
leveraging the power of the business community. Fortunately, Reagan
Republican free-market principles won out and were used to address the
acid rain problem in the early 1990s, reducing sulfur-dioxide emissions
faster and at a lower cost than originally projected.
Are we to believe that, simply because Democrats have finally accepted
the idea, cap-and-trade is no longer conservative?
The radicals have forgotten that responsible environmental stewardship
is a conservative value that has been championed by great conservatives
and Republicans throughout history.
In fact, it was President Reagan who first took action to protect our
climate from dangerous emissions.
When faced with mounting scientific concern about ozone depletion,
Reagan ignored the rancor from radicals and special interests who
wanted to ignore the problem. Instead, he listened carefully to the
experts and took prudent action to safeguard our atmosphere. He pushed
through the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty that began
phasing out the ozone-depleting chemicals used in aerosol sprays and
refrigeration equipment.
Under the rigid scrutiny of today's libertarian-inspired radicals who
occupy the furthest reaches of the GOP's right-wing, one has to
question if even President Reagan could pass muster.
Reagan's style of leadership was far removed from the radical ideology
and rigid litmus tests we're seeing too often in today's GOP. Reagan
shrewdly balanced bipartisanship with conservative principles in order
to build support for his agenda.
Reagan knew and reminded his fellow Republicans often that stewardship
is a conservative value.
In a 1984 speech, Reagan put it this way: "If we've learned any lessons
during the past few decades, perhaps the most important is that
preservation of our environment is not a partisan challenge; it's
common sense. Our physical health, our social happiness, and our
economic well-being will be sustained only by all of us working in
partnership as thoughtful, effective stewards of our natural resources."
Those are wise words from a great conservative.
While Sen. Graham seems to have taken them to heart, the Charleston
County GOP Executive Committee clearly has not.
